Geithner Favors Letting Tax Cuts Expire

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner today said that the Administration is in favor of allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire for the wealthiest of Americans:.

"Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said that allowing tax cuts for the wealthy to expire would be "the responsible thing to do."

This is the last year for the tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush. Republicans have generally favored extending all of them. While Democrats are divided on the issue, President Barack Obama has favored allowing the expiration of cuts he says have applied to the wealthiest people.

"It's responsible to let the tax cuts expire that just go to 2 percent to 3 percent of Americans, the highest earning Americans," Geithner told ABC's "This Week" in an interview broadcast Sunday.

Doing so would show the world that the U.S. is "willing as a country now to start to make some progress" reducing long-term budget deficits, he said.

Geithner said he does not believe that higher taxes for those high earners will hurt economic growth."

It's difficult to know where to start with such idiocy.

1) Allowing tax cuts to expire "would be the responsible thing to do": What would actually be "responsible" is if the US government actually were to acknowledge that it was broke and will not remotely have sufficient funds to meet its future Social Security or Medicare obligations, nor pay-off its existing liabilities. Then we could have an honest debate as a country about what to do next. Continuing to pretend that we're not broke is the "irresponsible" thing to do.

2) Allowing tax cuts to expire demonstrates that the federal government is willing to "start to make some progress reducing long-term budget deficits": The Democrats have never, ever had any realistic plan to balance the budget, or even come close to doing that. The closest they came was when President Clinton was in office, but he was backed by a Republican-controlled Congress, so that doesn't count. Their meal-ticket voters are those that demand more and more "freebies" from the government, so don't count on them actually fighting this trend.

3) Allowing tax cuts to expire will not "hurt economic growth": is raising taxes on the most-productive Americans in the midst of a recession supposed to be the Democrat's idea of stimulus? Of course this will hurt the economy. Taking money from the most productive members of society and having a band of elected thugs divvy it up is not exactly the most efficient way for society to allocate scarce resources.

Timothy Geithner is a tax-evading mouthpiece who needs to be removed from his position and replaced by someone with actual real-world experience.

Better yet, Americans should throw the whole lot out of office before they permanently ruin this country.