The folks at Bloomberg have put together this nice widget for keeping track of who wants what from the fight over extending the Bush tax cuts. The visualization is useful in showing just how much of the Bush tax cuts President Obama actually supports -- in rough dollar figures, just over three-quarters of them! Kenyan Socialism apparently comes in a supply-side flavor. Joking aside, the compromise proposed by the administration and Democrats in Congress is a pretty square deal for Republicans, but the Bloomberg chart also reminds me that I've found myself on the same side of the fence as former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, who thinks it might be best if all the Bush tax cuts were rolled back. While the stimulus benefits of maintaining that kind of tax cut could be valuable during the recession, I'd rather see growth policies come from more efficient sources, like infrastructure investment.
-- Tim Fernholz
