Karl Rove spends eight hundred words decrying potential Obama administration tax increases but doesn't find the space to mention the billions of dollars in tax cuts that have have already been passed by the new president. In a similar phenomenon, Kirsten Soltis writes a much smarter analysis of the tax issue for Republicans but also doesn't address the same key problem with conservatives' argument that they can regain political support by promising tax cuts: The administration has already cut taxes on most people.
True, the president does intend to let the top bracket of Bush cuts expire -- a change of less than 5 percent for the wealthy -- and down the road some kind of tax reform will come into play to reduce complexity and probably expand the tax base (the president has said as much). But I have yet to hear, either from the Tea Party folks or anyone else on the right, how conservatives intend to respond to the administration's argument -- Press Secretary Robert Gibbs repeated it half a dozen times yesterday alone -- that "the President promised significant tax relief for working families in this country, and in the first month of his administration delivered just that to the American people." I'd posit that complaining about big spending isn't enough as long as people like the spending, which they do, and the president makes the right moves towards long-term fiscal responsibility. Has anyone on the right dealt with this?
-- Tim Fernholz
