cross-posted from Working America's Main Street blog where I am a featured guest blogger
Ben Armbruster at Think Progress calls out Republican Senator Jon Kyl as a deficit fraud for wanting to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy without paying for their $678 billion deficit price tag. Kyl, of course, has been a leader of the Republican obstruction of any economic stimulus, including extending unemployment insurance, citing fake deficit concerns.
But today on Fox News Sunday, Kyl threw his concerns about the deficit out the window when discussing tax cuts. Kyl said Congress should not allow the Bush tax cuts to expire, but when host Chris Wallace asked, "How are you going to pay the $678 billion to keep Bush tax cuts for the wealthy?" Kyl wouldn’t answer. And in fact, he went so far as to say tax cuts should never have to be paid for:
WALLACE: We’re running out of time, so how are you going to pay $678 billion just on the tax cuts for people making more than $250,000 a year?
KYL: You should never raise taxes in order to cut taxes. Surely congress has the authority and it would be right, if we decide we want to cut taxes to spur the economy, not to have to raise taxes in order to offset those costs. You do need to offset the cost of increased spending. And that’s what republicans object to. But you should never have to offset cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans.
For all their yammering about deficits and debt, what's become crystal clear is that Republicans use the deficit issue when they want to block plans to create jobs and improve the economic conditions for working families and the unemployed, but when it comes to propping up the wealthy they're all for government intervention and deficits be damned.
Still, I would imagine that Kyl will be among the most vocal objectors when the bill to provide emergency funding for extended unemployment insurance finally hits the Senate floor again. Kyl and his fellow deficit frauds have thus far blocked that bill from reaching a floor vote, despite the backing of a clear Senate majority. As a result, more than 2 million jobless workers have had their benefits cut off, a number that could reach 3.2 million by the end of July.
Fighting the deficit fraud gang effectively means exposing their fraud at every turn -- something Senate Democrats should be doing more aggressively. But it also means that real, practical policies to improve the economic outlook for Main Street America need to be advanced in the context of how they can actually reduce our long term debt.
And there are a host of progressive policies that would actually improve the deficit. Check out the Deficit Calculator developed by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR).
Click here or on the image below to go to the interactive calculator.
For example, if the Federal Reserve were to buy and hold $2 trillion of long-term U.S. Treasury securities, it would help provide financing for economic stimulus while reducing the debt by $3.1 trillion.
Reducing the size of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan to 30,000 by 2013 would reduce the debt by $1 trillion.
Enacting a real public health insurance option, as well as negotiated Medicare drug prices and public-funded drug trials would lower the debt by $2.5 trillion.
And a marginal tax on financial speculation would reduce the debt by $2.1 trillion over ten years, and raise an estimated $140 billion a year in new revenue.
More than two dozen specific policy options are included, along with helpful background descriptions and options for sharing results.
CEPR notes that the Flash program is needed to run the calculator.