The beauty of extending the tax cuts for only two years is that canceling them doesn’t require an affirmative vote. It happens by default, so Congressional deadlock works in its favor. And it would essentially solve our medium-term deficit problem, reducing the deficit by $200 billion to $350 billion a year from 2015 to 2020.
Like all plans, this one isn’t perfect. Some may complain that higher marginal tax rates, even if deferred until 2013, will cripple small businesses and economic activity. It’s hard to believe, however, that effectively returning the tax code to its 1990s form would lead to economic catastrophe, especially when many leading Republican economists — including Alan Greenspan and Martin Feldstein — agree that we can’t afford to continue the tax cuts forever. More troubling, middle-class and lower-class families would be saddled with higher taxes. That’s a legitimate concern, but also a largely unavoidable one if we are to tackle the medium-term fiscal problem.
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