Constituents Jeer Rep. Dan Lungren’s (R-CA) Support Of Bush Tax Cuts For The Rich

At a town hall last Wednesday attended by ThinkProgress, Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA) was asked why he supports the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy since America has lost millions of jobs since its passage. When Lungren deflected, saying that everyone benefits from the Bush tax cuts and that Obama supported extending them, , several people began jeering him. Lungren, who at one point threatened to leave the Carmichael town hall, said he doesn’t know of any economists who support raising taxes during a recession.

Lungren should have been asked why leaders of his caucus want to increase taxes during a recession. He defines allowing a temporary tax cut to expire as a tax increase. Paul Ryan definitely argued against extending the payroll tax holiday. Other prominent Republican congressmen have gone mealy mouthed when asked, but, as far as I know, no Republican has endorsed not increasing the payroll tax during a recession.

If they have any problem with raising a tax not paid by rich people during this recession, now would be a great time to tell us.

Also the bit about Bush's tax cuts helping everyone first assumes that deficits never create any problems (so why not just eliminate all taxes) and second feebly attempts to mislead those who might have forgotten that the question was about the Bush tax cuts for the rich (the one's whose extension Obama opposed) not about the Bush tax cuts which apply to non rich people too (whose extension Obama supported). His claim about Obama is false as stated. He could only have made a true claim by distinguishing the cuts for the rich alone from the cuts for non rich people too. Obviously he'd rather pretend to be unable to understand plain English than do that.

Basically he took the Molotovian approach and interpreting "for the rich" as an assertion that Bush tax cuts were all strictly for the rich and not as a qualifier. To clarify my violation of Goodwinsky's law, the other case of such a dodge was the claim Stalin's foreign ministry made about the correct way to interpret the Yalta treaty.