Obama Announces Tax Cut Framework
President Obama tonight announced the outlines of a deal to temporarily extend the Bush-era tax cuts for all Americans, including the wealthiest, signaling he was not willing to gamble on a prolonged fight on taxes during this persistent recession and at a time when his leverage with lawmakers is at a low ebb following the 2010 mid-terms in which the Democrats lost their majority in the House. The president said a 13-month Unemployment Insurance extension and various middle-class tax provisions are included in the overall deal, which is expected to cost many hundreds of billions of dollars (exact figures are hard to come by right now). Ezra Klien has more on the not-yet-finalized details.
“I have no doubt that everyone will find something in this compromise that they don’t like,” the president said in a statement. “In fact, there are things in here that I don’t like — namely the extension of the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and the wealthiest estates. But these tax cuts will expire in two years. And I’m confident that as we make tough choices about bringing our deficit down, as I engage in a conversation with the American people about the hard choices we’re going to have to make to secure our future and our children’s future and our grandchildren’s future, it will become apparent that we cannot afford to extend those tax cuts any longer.”
Enough House and Senate Democrats — many of whom are extremely grumpy about the higher bracket tax-cut extension but even more mad they can’t do much to stop it — will have to join with Republicans to pass the legislation that embodies the plan. In the Senate, that means 60 votes.