Steve Benen caught something most people missed. Senate Minority Whip, Jon Kyl of Arizona, went on Fox News yesterday and made an alarming declaration.
“You should never raise taxes in order to cut taxes. Surely Congress has the authority, and it would be right to, 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.”
He was responding to a question about how to pay the $678 billion price tag of maintaining the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy over the next ten years, and his response was that Congress shouldn’t have to pay for them at all. Benen’s response was spot-on.
It’s quite a message to Americans: Republicans believe $30 billion for unemployment benefits don’t even deserve a vote because the money would be added to the deficit, but Republicans also believe that adding the cost of $678 billion in tax cuts for the wealthy to the deficit is just fine.
The lesson couldn’t be any more obvious: the GOP’s economic agenda is a pathetic charade.
Of course, writing this is redundant because you already knew that the GOP’s economic agenda is a charade. All this talk about balancing the budget is nothing more than an argument about who benefits from government spending. The GOP runs up deficits when they are in power and the Democrats try to clean up their mess. Republicans only object to raising revenue, not spending it. That will never change.