CTJ Says Obama Plan to Partially Extend Bush Tax Cuts Would Still Increase Deficit

The Bush Tax Cuts

The most important platform plank on the individual side of the tax system is the call to allow the "Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest to expire," which reflects President Obama's proposal to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire for income over $250,000. Under the president's proposal, 98.1% of Americans would continue receiving the entirety of their Bush tax cuts. It's important to note that while the wealthiest Americans would lose part of their tax cuts under President Obama's proposal, they would still receive generous tax breaks because any income up to $250,000 (or $200,000 for singles) would continue to be taxed at the low, Bush tax cut rates. As a result, the wealthiest 1%, for example, would get an average tax break of $20,130 in 2013.

It is also important to note that even this partial extension of the Bush tax cuts the president proposes would increase the deficit by an astounding $4.2 trillion over the next decade. To be sure, President Obama's plan is much more fiscally responsible than a full extension of the Bush tax cuts, which would increase the deficit by $5.4 trillion. But fiscal responsibility will eventually require something bolder than simply extending most of the tax cuts that are responsible for most of the deficit.

Corporate Tax Reform

Turning to corporate taxes, the Democratic platform follows the misguided "Framework for Corporate Tax Reform," introduced by President Obama earlier this year, which proposes to use the closure of corporate tax loopholes to pay for lower corporate tax rates. It also proposes an expansion of the research and manufacturing tax credits. What this framework gets right is a call to end the egregious loopholes and tax breaks that allow major corporations to pay an average effective tax rate of half the statutory rate, with many corporations paying nothing at all.

The problem is that instead of using the revenue raised by eliminating tax loopholes and breaks to fund desperately needed government investments and reduce the deficit, the Democratic platform, like the president's framework, squanders the revenue on lower corporate tax rates and/or additional wasteful tax breaks. In other words, this kind of "revenue-neutral" corporate tax reform is not what the US needs; instead, we need revenue-positive reform.

Stuck in the Anti-Tax Mindset

The Democratic Party 2012 platform reveals a party deeply committed to the anti-tax mindset that historically is associated with the Republican Party. Rather than laying out the cold, hard truth about how the US needs to raise a substantial amount of revenue to meet its commitment to future generations, the Democratic platform seems an attempt to one-up Republicans on the virtues of tax cutting by touting the wide variety of cuts Democrats already enacted, and the massive amount they plan to extend. Given the enormous need for revenue to fund public investments and eventually reduce the deficit, a record of tax-cutting should be a source of embarrassment rather than pride or celebration.