Congress (read, the Republican Party - the party of fiscal restraint, to hear them tell it) just orchestrated the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the rich. $70 BILLION worth of cuts. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities calculates that the average family will get a $20 tax cut. Millionaires will get $42,000.
But we're supposed to believe that that's okay because when you cut taxes, tax revenues go up. Yeah, that happens in my budget too. When our income is reduced, we have more money. It's uncanny. So, we're going to have tax cuts "for all Americans" AND we're going to have more money -which turns out to be fortunate because as it is, we're spending $350 billion more per year than we have.
The Washington Post (hardly a bastion of wild-eyed liberals) editorializes thus: "Budgetary dishonesty, distributional unfairness, fiscal irresponsibility—by now the words are so familiar, it can be hard to appreciate how damaging this fiscal course will be".
It won't be long before someone notices that the math isn't working out quite like the President had suggested and we'll start talking about more cuts to the budget. Undoubtedly, we'll have to forego silly little niceties like student loans and Medicaid funding and special education. Oh wait, we've already cut those. What's left? They're not going to consider the fairly obvious answer of reducing the funding for the war in Iraq or defense more generally, so really -what IS left? Wild guess here... the poor are going to bear the brunt of this.
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