If anyone is responsible for increasing taxes- Republicans are.

[kpete]

Republicans About to Lie in Tax Cut Bed of Their Own Devising

"They wrote a tax cut bill that was too expensive to pass. Then instead of actually moderating the scale of their agenda, they made the cost appear smaller by arbitrarily phasing the cuts out under the theory that they could then turn around and accuse adversaries of implementing a huge tax increase if they refused to make the cuts permanent.

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Over email, Bruce Bartlett observes:

According to press reports, in his budget Obama will allow many of the Bush tax cuts to expire next year. Republicans charge that this constitutes the largest tax increase in history. I think it is important to remember that the reason the Bush tax cuts are expiring is because that’s the way Republicans wrote the legislation. If anyone is responsible for increasing taxes, they are.

I believe that Republicans could have had permanent tax cuts which would have been better for the economy in the first place. But they would have had to negotiate with the Democrats. They preferred not to do so, believing that they could just extend their temporary tax cuts forever. I warned for years that this was a stupid strategy, but was ignored. Now the chickens have come home to roost.

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/02/repu...