Who Would Benefit From Extending Bush-Era Tax Cuts?

JEFFREY BROWN:

The issue is already being hotly debated in midterm election races, and will likely come to a head after the November results are in.

And we hold our own debate on this question now with Heather Boushey, senior economist at the Center for American Progress, a liberal policy group in Washington, and Jeffrey Miron, an economist at Harvard University and a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute.

Heather Boushey, what's the economic argument for doing what the president wants and letting the tax cuts for top earners lapse?

HEATHER BOUSHEY, senior economist, Center For American Progress: Well, the important thing right mow is that the economy still needs customers. We still need people to go out there and spend money.

And what the president has proposed is that we keep those tax cuts for middle-class families, the families that are going to spend the money, the — those extra dollars in their pocket, but you let them expire for the folks at the very top.

We saw over the 2000s that those tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans didn't lead to strong economic growth, didn't lead to strong investment, didn't lead to strong job gains. And, so, we know that those folks aren't going to spend that money. They're not going to do as much as focusing those dollars on the middle class, where it can have the most bang for the buck right now.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7sa7SZ6arn1%2Bjsri%2Fx6isq2ejnby4e9ahpmavn6q5pXnBnqWenpmpeqe%2BzqZknrCkmrultc2gZJuto516pr7AZquasF2YwrW%2F