The Tax-Cut Deal

Some posts from a week ago on the tax cut deal.

Ezra Klein wrote Six lessons from the tax deal. He also posted The White House's case for the tax-cut deal in one graph:



and then followed up with Greg Sargents followup graph Will 2012 be different than 2010?

I do agree with this summation of what happened: "The story that the White House tells about the tax cuts is this: We have a shaky economy that can't afford a large tax increase. Congressional Democrats refused to vote the upper-income tax cuts out of existence before the election. They could've done it, the White House wanted them to do it, and Obama certainly would've signed the bill. But they didn't. And then they lost the election. Newly empowered Republicans refused to extend the tax cuts for income under $250,000 unless they also got the tax cuts for income over $250,000. This isn't a popular position in the country, but with the next election two years away, they're not worried about popularity. So given the choice between letting the cuts expire and potentially harm the recovery and negotiating a compromise which pumps hundreds of billions in extra stimulus into the economy over the next two years, the White House chose the latter."