.@gopleader Boehner dodges #p2

source http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/9/16/902454/-Boehner-dodges?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dailykos%2Findex+%28Daily+Kos%29

Will John Boehner hold President Obama's middle-class tax cut proposal hostage, or won't he? Well, surprise, surprise. He won't say:

House Minority Leader John Boehner is demanding an up-or-down vote on a complete extension of all the Bush tax cuts -- but he won't say what Republicans will do if Democrats buck him and try to let the Bush tax cuts for the rich expire.

"The Speaker should pledge to the American people...that there will be an honest, up-or-down vote on stopping all of the coming tax hikes," Boehner said. "Anything less than that is unacceptable." ... "I don't want to get into a bunch of hypotheticals," Boehner said. "Republicans in the House and Senate are united that this is not the time to increase taxes on anyone in America."

Boehner, caught between a radicalized Republican base and the rest of America, obviously feels trapped. You can smell his weakness from a thousand miles away. Politically, it's the best thing Democrats have going for them right now, but it's not just about politics. President Obama's tax cut plan is the right policy for the country and now is the right time to pass it into law.

Update: Even as he dodges questions about whether he would hold President Obama's middle-class tax cut plan hostage, House GOP leader John Boehner is proposing a plan that would do just that, linking President Obama's middle-class tax cuts with Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy. Under Boehner's proposal -- which he pushed in a news conference earlier today --  both tax cuts would be extended for two years, at which point they would simultaneously expire.

The strange thing about Boehner's proposal is that instead of agreeing to a permanent extension of the Obama's middle-class tax cuts -- which he claims to support -- he wants to only extend them two years. The reason is obvious: Boehner wants to link the popular Obama tax cuts for the middle-class with the unpopular Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, so that two years from now, he can try to hold them hostage once again. Democrats really need to call his bluff. Everybody agrees we should extend the middle-class tax cuts permanently, so let's do that. Then, let's turn to the question of whether to extend the tax cuts for the wealthy. They are two separate questions -- let's treat them as such.