Pushing Pelosi's Tax Cut Repeal

I appeared on Fox Business with Neil Cavuto tonight to discuss House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's push to immediately repeal the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest one percent of income earners. You can watch the segment here.

As you can see, I echoed Pelosi's point about the $226 billion in tax cuts showing no signs of creating the kind of jobs growth that spending would. Cavuto counters by falling back on the canard about the New Deal supposedly failing to boost the economy - a canard that ignores the verifiable fact that the pre-World War II New Deal era saw the sharpest drop in the unemployment rate in American history.

You can watch the full debate for all the back and forth, but let me just conclude by saying that while I don't agree with Cavuto on a lot of things, I do appreciate him devoting a significant chunk of airtime to debate economic issues like this. He's conservative, no doubt - but he's not a Republican automaton in that he seems genuinely interested in having a real debate. I appreciate that, because I think progressives can find some common ground with principled conservatives (as opposed to partisan hacks), and because I think principled arguments are far more informative to the public than strictly partisan spats.

Additionally, I appreciate anyone willing to give a progressive a forum to push a repeal of Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. $226 billion is a helluva lot of money that we can reclaim for more important priorities than another giveaway to the rich.

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