We are grateful for stories like these. Mark Zandi is floating a tax cut "compromise" that "temporarily" extends the Big Boy tax cuts (those on the $250,000+/year crowd).
Jared Bernstein, Biden's economics adviser, just shot that down in an interview with the Huffington Post. Sam Stein (h/t David Dayen):
A key member of the White House economic team is throwing cold water on a leading compromise proposal in the debate over the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.Dear Team Matching Words to Deeds — more of this please. Thanks.
"There are many good reasons not to extend the high-end parts of the Bush tax cuts having to do with the fear that a temporary extension could be made permanent," Bernstein said. "What you are talking about -- a $30 to 40 billion range in terms of adding to the deficit by extending the high end -- could easily become $700 billion over a ten-year budget window." . . .
The White House has favored letting the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy expire as they are set to do under the law. But administration officials haven't been pressed about the middle-ground proposal. Bernstein's comments are the closest that White House aides have come to fully rejecting the idea and they portend an even more dramatic and heated political fight once the issue of the Bush tax cuts re-emerges following Congress' August recess.
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