Pelosi Breaks Rank, Advocates Bush Era Tax Cuts

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has broken with President Barack Obama and called for extending the Bush tax cuts to those making $1 million or less. Obama has previously called for the tax cuts to be extended for those making less than $250,000 a year.

Pelosi made the move in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner in which she called on him to bring a permanent extension of the middle income tax cuts to the House floor immediately.

“We must ask the very wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share,” she said in the letter. “Democrats believe that tax cuts for those earning over a million dollars a year should expire and that we should use the resulting revenues to pay down the deficit.

“By ensuring that the middle-income tax cuts do not expire, we will put money into the pockets of American consumers, saving the typical middle-income family thousands of dollars per year. Extension of this middle-income tax cut will inject demand into our markets and strengthen small businesses. By investing in both the short-term growth of our economy and the long-term prosperity of our nation, it will empower the entrepreneurial spirit of the American people. We cannot afford another manufactured crisis that unnecessarily threatens the full faith and credit of the United States and jeopardizes our economic recovery.”

However, Fox News reported the White House is not shifting its position and neither are House Republicans.

"The president has been clear that Congress must extend the tax rates for all families making less than $250,000 a year and let the rates for the very wealthiest expire at the end of the year," White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage said according to Fox.

"The question now is whether Republicans in Congress will vote to give millions of middle-class families the confidence that they won't see their taxes go up at the end of the year, or whether they will continue to hold the middle class hostage so they can extend big tax cuts for the very wealthiest Americans that our nation can't afford."

According to Fox, a Boehner spokesman said, “Speaker Boehner has already announced that the House will act to stop the tax hike on every American taxpayer."