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Putting off a decision on the expiring tax cuts was a high-risk strategy that could backfire for Democrats. If no agreement is reached in a postelection session of Congress, taxes will rise on Jan. 1 for nearly every household. Neither party wants to be associated with that.
Obama and most Democratic leaders favor letting the cuts, passed in 2001 and 2003, lapse for the rich, but continue for everyone else. Republicans suggest that could wreck the fragile economic recovery; they want all the cuts extended.
The expiring tax cuts are not only on wage income. They also cover interest, dividends, capital gains and large inheritances. Relief from the marriage penalty would disappear, and the per-child tax deduction would slide from $1,000 back to $500.
Not knowing what tax rates will be just a few months from now adds to "the collective nervousness," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics. "With each passing day, the uncertainty increases."
Because neither party wants to be blamed for raising everyone's taxes in hard times, some compromise seems likely before year's end -- perhaps a temporarily extension for all the cuts. Efforts to slash taxes on businesses, though supported by Obama and both parties, have stalled without finding a way to avoid adding to the government's debt.
Democrats kept scolding Republicans as "the party of no," and then the GOP rolled out a "Pledge to America" last month. Full of rhetorical flourishes modeled on the Declaration of Independence and Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America" from 1994, this new statement of principles calls for extending all the Bush tax cuts while offering vague spending cuts. Nonessential government spending would return to 2008 levels, according to the blueprint.
"Putting spending, putting the policy of economic growth in place and cleaning up the way Congress works is not only a stark contrast to this president and this Congress. It's a contrast to the way we conducted ourselves a decade ago. We spent too much money. We lost our way," said Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, one of the GOP's rising stars.
Both parties suffer divisions within their own ranks over goals and priorities.
Senate Republicans, for instance, did not join their House counterparts in lining up behind the agenda. Some Republicans have criticized it for lacking specifics on how to reduce deficits while extending tax cuts.
Fiscally conservative Democrats are resisting pleas by Obama, Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to extend the Bush middle-class tax cuts but allow taxes to rise on households making more than $250,000 a year.
Neither party "is getting a clear strategy or message together," said American University political scientist James Thurber. "The election will be about anger, with not a lot of content."
Economists disagree on the effectiveness of Obama's stimulus program. Much of the money has gone into tax cuts and helping hard-pressed states instead of directly creating jobs.
"The stimulus bill was a positive, but we didn't get nearly the bang for the buck that we should have," said David Wyss, chief economist for Standard & Poor's in New York.
"The financial regulation bill did fix some of the stuff that needed to be fixed, but it failed to fix a lot that should have been fixed and tried to fix what wasn't broken. And the health care reform concentrated on improving coverage and did nothing for cost control."
As for Republicans, he conjured up a reference to Harry Potter's school.
"I frankly haven't seen any recommendations from them that would have significantly helped," Wyss said. "They're all in favor of cutting taxes, not cutting spending, and balancing the budget by I guess Hogwarts Economics."
[Associated
Press;
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