California Conservative

According to the Washington Times’ Amy Fagan, a deal has been reached to extend some of President Bush’s tax cuts.

Republican leaders in Congress yesterday agreed to a $69 billion bill on tax-cut extension, which could be approved by both chambers by the end of the week, handing President Bush one of his top tax goals. The House is expected to vote late today on the extension package, and Senate Republican leadership aides said yesterday that they hope the Senate will follow suit tomorrow or Friday.

I can’t stress how important this extension is, not just because it’s smart policy, but because it’s a morale booster to GOP activists back in key House districts. It’s also important to start notching up political victories going into the fall campaign in terms of changing the headlines. If the GOP congress starts getting things done, the Agenda Media will be forced to cover those accomplishments.

Still, it’s important to note how important the tax cuts have been in this economic expansion. They’ve definitely produced prosperity for alot of people and strong economic growth in almost every sector of the economy.

The tax legislation is a leftover from last year. After months of negotiations, House and Senate tax writers agreed to a measure that would extend for two years the 15 percent tax rate on capital gains and dividends income, otherwise set to expire in 2008. It also would extend a one-year fix to save millions more Americans from having to pay the alternative minimum tax.

While Democrats have criticized this as tax cuts for the rich, the truth is that alot of pension funds benefit from these low tax rates. The reason why they won’t talk about that is because Democrats worry that it might make PRA’s more appealing. If there’s anything that Democrats hate, it’s the thought that there might be a better system than the Social Security system.

“These provisions have proven to strengthen our economy and help provide a stable and inviting environment for small businesses to invest and grow,” said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, (R-TN). Mr. Frist hit at Democrats’ tax policy, saying, “Rarely have they met a tax hike they don’t like.”

Sen. Frist is being too generous in saying that Democrats have rarely “met a tax hike they didn’t like.” It’s more like they’ve never met a tax hike they didn’t like. That point was drilled home to me about a decade ago when I caught a Minnesota state senate debate between three Democratic senators on what to use the money from a new tax increase on. One senator said it should fund more schools. Another senator said it should be used to build new roads. The other senator said it should fix the roads in the worst shape. What made the ‘debate’ so unforgettable was because we had just found out that we had a $3.5 billion surplus a month before.

Raising taxes is just part of a Democrat’s genetic makeup. thankfully, we’ve got Republicans in control who hate them.

Technorati Tags: Tax Cuts, Bush, Economy

Cross-post at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 10th, 2006 at 12:30 am and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Domestic Policies, Economy, Elections, W. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.