The lead editorial in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal attacks the budget deal being considered by House Speaker John Boehner, stating that it would be “worse than no deal at all.”
“Tax and spending increases now, in return for the promise of spending cuts and tax and entitlement reform later . . . is a bad deal for everyone except the politicians who want more money to spend,” the Journal observes.
Boehner has moved from opposing tax rate hikes to offering higher rates for incomes above $1 million a year, but that would “still put the GOP on record as endorsing a tax increase, in particular on small businesses that file individual returns,” the editorial points out.
Republicans “shouldn’t associate themselves with a deal that increases spending and taxes with little or nothing tangible in return.”
Among the points in the editorial, headlined “A Bad Budget Deal”:
- Raising taxes will “further enhance” President Obama’s goal of separating the middle class from the affluent on tax policy.
- What is being touted as tax reform “looks like it means both higher rates and fewer deductions.”
- The “biggest insult to the public’s intelligence” is Obama’s demand for more spending now, including an extension of jobless benefits, $50 billion in public works, and the elimination of the sequester provision calling for automatic spending cuts scheduled for the new year.
The Journal’s advice to Republicans: “Let Mr. Obama own the tax increase and its measly 7.5 percent annual reduction in a $1.1 trillion deficit. Let the sequester take effect as planned, which at least means some spending restraint. Then engage Mr. Obama next year in trench warfare over spending and the debt limit as voters figure out that soaking the rich doesn’t begin to solve the problem. A bad budget deal is worse than no deal at all.”
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