The Democrats Unfurl the White Flag on Taxes and Class Warfare

I'm dumbfounded and amazed. When Democrats and Republicans have a game of chicken, the GOP blinks 99 percent of the time. And I thought for sure this was going to happen in the fight about whether to extend all the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts (the GOP position), or whether to impose a big, class-warfare tax increase on investors entrepreneurs (the Obama position to punsih the so-called rich). Democrats simply needed to get one Republican senator to surrender and they would have 60 votes in the Senate to overcome any procedural objection. But, to my astonishment, this didn't happen. Democrats threw in the towel. Not totally, the issue is simply being postponed to a "lame duck" session after the election, but it's hard to see how the left will feel any more emboldened after being kicked in the teeth by voters. But there is a very dark lining to this silver cloud. As the Wall Street Journal warns, many statists actually want a big tax increase on everybody, and they can make this happen by simply sitting on their hands.

Only a week ago, President Obama and his media supporters were asserting that they had Republicans caught in their class-war pincers: They'd lure the GOP into opposing an extension of lower tax rates for the middle class in order to defend lower tax rates for those making more than $200,000 a year. ...[but] the Democrats have cut and run, lest they get blamed for voting for a tax increase in a slow-growth economy. This is how legislative majorities behave when they've lost the political argument and can sense their days are numbered. ...Democrats will now enter the campaign's home stretch with the threat that all of the Bush-era tax rates could expire on January 1. That means the lowest tax bracket would revert to 15% from 10%, the per child tax credit would revert to $500 from $1,000, and millions of middle class families would pay thousands of dollars more in federal taxes. Keep in mind that this is the not-so-secret desire of many on the left who think the country "can't afford" to let Americans keep so much of their own money. Peter Orszag has already admitted this since leaving his post as White House budget director. What these Democrats really mean is that they think the only way to pay for their spending plans is by soaking the middle class—because that's where the real money is. ...Liberals pretend they can finance a European-style entitlement state by taxing only the rich because they know that soaking the middle class is unpopular.