Monday, November 24, 2008

BARACK OBAMA

No Tax Hikes Until 2011?

I'm not quite breaking out the "All statements by Barack Obama come with an expiration date, all of them" on this, because I want to see something more than a comment by Axelrod.

Speaking on ABC's "This Week," David Axelrod, Obama's chief political strategist, said the president-elect is weighing whether to let the cuts for the wealthy expire on Dec. 31, 2010, as provided in current law. Such a delay would permit Obama to avoid raising taxes during a recession.

If accurate, this is fabulous news for several reasons. For starters, it means Obama will be avoiding the bad decision of taking money out of taxpayers' pockets at the exact moment the U.S. economy needs it the most. Second, if you're going to raise taxes, you want to do it far away from Election Day as possible. Obama and the Democrats, politically, would be best off raising taxes as early as possible. Congressional Republicans can, even from the minority, spend much of the summer and fall of 2010 loudly arguing in favor of extending the tax cuts — in what will be, at best, an economy that just emerged from a recession, or an economy still sluggishly plodding or worse.

11/24 11:06 AMShare