bush/obama tax cuts

[Riot]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...R9aW_blog.html

As the president said yesterday, letting the Bush tax cuts expire for the wealthy would not impact 98 percent of American wage earners and 97 percent of small-business owners.

“The upper-income cuts return $850 billion over 10 years to the Treasury, simply by reverting to the top rates under Clinton, when the wealthy fared perfectly well, the budget balanced, and growth was much stronger and more broadly shared than in the Bush years,” wrote Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the former chief economist and economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden. “The fact that these upper-income increases hit only the top 2% — and that’s considering both households and small businesses — is also important. They won’t hurt the wobbly recovery, as these folks are not income constrained in the first place.”