Dems Playing "Chicken" With Taxpayers

From the Washington Post:

"After 18 months of runaway spending, bailouts and takeovers, Washington Democrats are poised to allow the largest tax increase in American history to take effect next year," Rep. Mike Pence (Ind.), a member of the GOP leadership, said Saturday in the party's weekly radio address. "House Republicans will oppose this tax increase with everything we've got."

The Democrats are more interested in playing the class warfare card in the upcoming elections than doing their jobs.

This blows a hole in their argument that they're deficit hawks. They're not deficit hawks; they're deficit chickens," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), who heads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which is tasked with defending the party's House majority.

Political posturing aside, the difference between extending all the Bush tax cuts and just those the Dems claim apply to the "middle class" is $600 billion over ten years. This is hardly chump change, but when Democrats are running up a deficit of $1.47 trillion this year alone they can hardly sell themselves as competent stewards of our nation.

Besides, lost in the dems demogogic rhetoric is the fact that many of the "rich" they are planning to soak are small business owners:

Republicans say the tax cuts are critical to bolstering a feeble economic recovery. And with unemployment at 9.5 percent, even some Democrats are queasy about raising taxes on high earners -- a category that includes many small-business owners -- when policymakers are trying to encourage them to create jobs.

When the Democrat who chairs the Senate budget committee, Conrad (D-ND) isn't drinking the class warrior Kool-Aid, President Obama has a messaging problem.

When you add the Democrats willingness to see taxes rise and their promise to address the recommendations of the president's deficit commission in a lame duck session taxpayers are about to be hit with a one-two punch:

Obama debt commission member, Republican Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, launched a scary trial balloon on ABC News. Gregg suggested the debt commission will likely recommend a massive $26.7 trillion tax increase.