This assumes that Americans are too stupid to realize that it is the
Republicans' insistence on extending the tax cuts for the obscenely rich
that is preventing Congress from simply extending the cuts for the
middle class, limiting the inheritance tax exemption, and passing an
extension of the unemployment extended benefits program.
How much savvy does that really take though?
Polls show that a majority of Americans thinks that the tax cuts should
be ended for the wealthy, who after all, have only been getting richer
these past few years while the rest of us have gotten poorer, and that
wealthy estates should be taxed heavily. Polls also show that a majority
of Americans say that unemployment is the biggest problem facing
America today.
According to a new Bloomberg National Poll,
just published Dec. 9, only one-third of Americans support extending
the tax break for the wealthy. Interestingly, a quarter of Americans
actually want all the tax cuts to expire.
Clearly we Americans don't want the rich to keep skating on their taxes.
So how hard would it be for Democrats to simply refuse to cave to
this Republican tactic of "all or nothing" on extending the tax cut two
more years, and to then go to voters and tell them straight that if they
want to have their own taxes stay low, and if they want the long-term
unemployed to continue to receive unemployment checks, they need to lean
on their representatives to stop stonewalling to protect the rich?
We all would get that. And it would turn the issue around completely,
from blaming the Democrats for raising taxes to blaming the Republicans
for the failure to preserve the middle-class tax break and for stiffing
the unemployed.
Since most of us want the rich to pay more, and most of us sympathize
with those who've lost their jobs in this recession, eventually
Republicans would have to cave or face disaster in 2012.
What the Democrats' failure to do this tells us is that they, or at
least the president and a large number of Democrats in Congress, don't really want to raise taxes on the rich. They are only pretending that is an issue for them.
Either that, or you'd have to conclude that they are just dumb
jackasses. How could it possibly be smart politics for Democrats to
extend tax cuts for the rich now, as if in two years, when the issue
comes up again, they'd have a better chance at ending the cuts and
raising taxes on the wealthy?
After this session of Congress, there will
be fewer Democrats in the Senate, and the Republicans will control the
House! It's really now or never, because odds are in 2012, the way
things are going, there will be even more Republicans in the House, and
they may even retake control of the Senate and the White House.
Or alternatively, you'd have to conclude that the Democrats just
think we're all so stupid that we wouldn't understand, if they refused
to extend the current tax cuts, that the reason we take a hit on our
paychecks after Jan. 1, and the reason the long-term unemployed are
being ignored, is because Republicans insisted on protecting the tax
breaks for the rich, not because Democrats don't care about our plight.
