In an oped for the Wall Street Journal this morning, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor took the Congressional Republicans' commitment to holding middle class tax cuts hostage to a new level by pledging to fight any effort to extend them without an extension for the top two percent of the wealthiest Americans.
Here’s what Cantor and the Republicans are holding hostage: a tax cut for all Americans on the first $250,000 of their income. Under the Obama plan, every middle class family would receive the immediate certainty and comfort of knowing their tax cuts were permanently extended. Every American making more than $250,000 per year they would receive a tax cut on the first $250,000 of their income. And for income above that amount, this change would leave their tax rates at or below the rates that existed when President Clinton was in office and when the economy created 23 million jobs.
And here’s what they’re holding middle class tax relief hostage for: having our nation borrow $700 billion that we can’t afford to provide an average tax cut of $100,000 to millionaires and billionaires. This tax cut would be, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, just about the worst way to jumpstart our economy and help create jobs. That is why the President remains focused on strengthening the middle class to help grow the economy.
Fonte: White House