{"id":8613,"date":"2006-09-29T13:29:44","date_gmt":"2006-09-29T17:29:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8613.html"},"modified":"2006-09-29T13:29:44","modified_gmt":"2006-09-29T17:29:44","slug":"when-dems-slam-republicans-for-raising-taxes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/when-dems-slam-republicans-for-raising-taxes\/","title":{"rendered":"When Dems slam Republicans for raising taxes"},"content":{"rendered":"

At this point, the administration’s happy talk not withstanding, it’s fair to say this economy isn’t doing the middle class any favors<\/a>.<\/p>\n

An American Progress report<\/a> released yesterday shows that the “typical double-income family in the United States is worse off financially than ever<\/a>,” Reuters reports. “Middle-class families are struggling to pay for a home, health insurance, transportation and their children’s college with wages that have not kept pace with higher prices,” the report states. Despite five years of economic recovery, “average job growth is one-fifth that of previous business cycles and wages are flat when inflation is factored into the equation.”<\/p>\n

At the same time, the cost of families” top five expenditures — medical care, housing, food, household operations, and cars — have risen more than twice as fast as the cost of the bottom five items<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

With this in mind, it may seem odd that congressional Republicans would raise middle class taxes, especially in an election year, but if we’re playing by GOP rules, that’s exactly what’s about to happen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The DSCC, noting a series of tax write-offs that will expire this year, believes Republicans are vulnerable on this issue. “The GOP Congress will raise taxes on 19.2 million Americans unless something is done before [today],” according to a memo of talking points sent out by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.<\/p>\n

The memo adds, “Middle-class families will see their state and local sales taxes, college tuition and fees, and teachers’ purchase of school supplies get more expensive because the Republican Congress is failing to act.”<\/p>\n

As campaign-season criticism goes, this has the added benefit of being true.
\n
\nThis year, tax breaks for college tuition, retirement savings, teacher’s school supplies, state sales tax, and a small business R&D tax credit — affecting nearly 20 million Americans in all — will expire. Congress was going to renew the breaks, but Republicans didn’t get around to putting the write-offs on the legislative agenda.<\/p>\n

Congressional Dems, who favor keeping the tax breaks, are taking advantage<\/a> of the situation.<\/p>\n

House Democrats, including New York Rep. Charles B. Rangel, have made the same argument.<\/p>\n

“Well, who’s raising taxes now?” said Mr. Rangel, the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You can almost hear Rangel grinning, can’t you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At this point, the administration’s happy talk not withstanding, it’s fair to say this economy isn’t doing the middle class any favors. An American Progress report released yesterday shows that the “typical double-income family in the United States is worse off financially than ever,” Reuters reports. “Middle-class families are struggling to pay for a home, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8613\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}