July 26, 2012 04:46 PM UTC

"Taxmageddon"--Same Old Song With Higher Political Stakes

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• by: Colorado Pols

ABC News:

Just hours after the Senate voted to extend tax cuts for the middle class, President Obama accused House Republicans of holding the tax cuts “hostage” until the nation agrees to spend $1 trillion on tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans.

Speaking to supporters at the House of Blues, the president praised the Senate for moving forward with his plan to extend the Bush-era tax rate for families earning less than $250,000 a year and to let the rate expire for higher earners.

“This is something I deeply believe in, because the middle class is still struggling, recovering from this recession.  You don’t need your taxes to go up and we could give you certainty right now,” he said…

“They believe in top-down economics,” he said of Republicans. “Their plan is to cut more taxes for the wealthy, cut more regulations on banks and corporations, cut more investments in things like education, job training, science, research – all with the thought that somehow that’s going to help us create jobs.  That’s what Mitt Romney believes. That’s what Washington Republicans believe.”

Meanwhile, CBS News:

It’s the House’s turn next week to vote on extending income tax cuts, and Republican Speaker John Boehner says President Barack Obama’s plan to let the cuts expire for the wealthiest Americans is unacceptable.

Yesterday’s vote by the Senate to pass the Democratic plan for extending the Bush tax cuts, meaning extending them only on income less than $250,000 per year, surely isn’t the last word, any more than the vote in the House next week on trhe GOP’s desired plan to extend the Bush tax cuts for everyone including the wealthy. The fact is, this will in all probability not get settled until the lame-duck session of Congress after this November’s elections.

So what we’ve got here is the same posturing and formation of political battle lines we saw during previous high-stakes negotiations between the Obama administration and the GOP-controlled U.S. House. The biggest difference is we’re well into summer in an election year, and unlike the debt-ceiling debate last year, and the battle will be fresher in the minds of voters come November. We’d also expect the issue to factor heavily during the August recess–both sides want to be clearly on record, and both sides think they have the better message for voters.

A National Journal poll taken last month found that only 26% of voters want the tax cuts extended for the wealthiest. 47% want the tax cuts to expire on income over $250,000 per year, and 18% want them to expire completely. Such polling starkly contrasts with the GOP’s hard line on the issue, as it has before. But this is the hill they’ll die on if there ever was one.

Qui bono in the end? We’ll leave that to our readers to decide, followed by the voters.