Say No to the Bush Tax Cuts

I think this is a line of demarcation.  If Democrats in the House, Senate, and White House go along with any "compromise" that includes extending the Bush tax cuts to all income classes, including those over $250K, then they've sacrificed too much.  It's a baseline question -- what do you believe in?  If you combine this compromise with the President's willingness to unilaterally freeze the pay of federal workers -- out of the blue, with no context -- then progressive folks have to question why they care about who is in the White House.

Of course, some will point to sentiments like this as evidence that the president is doing the right thing -- he's triangulating! he's working the middle!  he's compromising to help the unemployed!  But the fact remains that middle class tax cuts have passed both houses; there's just not enough in the Senate to break a filibuster.  Middle-class tax cuts -- cuts limited to the middle class -- have been the backbone of every Democratic platform for the past two decades.  For a Democrat-controlled House and Senate to pass the entire Bush tax cuts as essentially their last acts while in control -- well, it boggles the mind.

If this compromise passes, I fear we'll look back on this as a point at which our future changed, and not for the better.  This is an opportunity to call for shared sacrifice on a number of different important goals: reducing government debt, putting entitlement programs on stronger footing,  saving our planet from global warming.  This compromise reeks of political expediency and short-term thinking.  I'd like to hear a counterargument -- maybe I'm wrong on this.  But I feel pretty strongly that this is a change for the worse.