Sounding the Right Tune on Taxes

The President gets it right:

"Let me be clear to Mr. Boehner and everyone else. We should not hold middle class tax cuts hostage any longer," the president said. The administration "is ready this week to give tax cuts to every American making $250,000 or less," he said.

Indeed, this is the very message I have been listening for over the past couple weeks:

This is an issue with which Democrats can box in Republicans. The GOP will be in a difficult situation if it is forced to explain why it is advocating for a major increase in the deficit to pay for lower taxes for the wealthy, likewise would it be in a dangerous position were it to oppose an otherwise across-the-board extension of the 2001 tax cuts that did not include lowered rates for the rich. Whether Democrats use this issue for full effect remains to be seen, however.

And:

What the Democrats should be doing right now is not throwing their party under the bus in order to cater to wealthy donors. Instead, Democrats should be going on the floor of the House and the Senate to force Republicans to oppose tax cuts for the vast majority of taxpayers to save their unpopular pet project of keeping taxes low on the wealthiest Americans; either the GOP goes along with the Democrats, or they are keeping most other Americans from maintaining their lower tax rates.

Of course there are some Democrats on Capitol Hill that, for some reason, are taking an opposite tack, siding with the Republicans on extending tax cuts for the wealthy. These members of Congress may not have read the polling, however, which finds that not only do strong majorities of both Democrats and Independents favor allowing the rates on the rich to go up, but even a plurality of Republican voters saying the same. Leave it to some Democrats to turn a political winner of an issue into a political loser for their party. But at least the President gets it.