Washington (CNN) - It is strange political bedfellows. Some on the right are joining their usual adversaries on the left in their anger at the proposed tax cut deal.
Of course, the reasons for their dismay are different. While liberals wail at the extension of the Bush-era tax cuts for those making more than $250,000 per year and other items, many s are particularly upset that the measure would add hundreds of billions of dollars to the deficit.
Several conservatives, including Rep. Michelle Bachmann, R-Minnesota, are especially concerned the measure extends unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed without any offsetting spending cuts. A spokesman for her said she has not decided how she will vote until she sees the final legislation.
Leaders of the Tea Party Patriots group have sent an email to its supporters laying out some of the problems with the proposal and asking them whether they should oppose it.
“I am very upset. It is a direct breach of the Republican pledge not to add to the deficit,” Mark Meckler of the Tea Party Patriots group, said.
“You have Republicans coming out of the gate breaching the pledge they made not to add to the deficit,” Meckler said.
Republican leaders countered they are not in charge of the House yet and have vowed there will be more fiscal control once the GOP takes control next month.
Several activists and Republican members of Congress are upset that the measure re-instates the estate tax which had expired.
Sen. Jim DeMint, R-South Carolina, vowed earlier this week to filibuster the tax cut bill to prevent a vote on the Senate floor. He said those who ran on the right in the election said they would not vote for anything that increased the deficit. “This does. It raises taxes, it raises the death tax,” he told conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday.
Club For Growth, a fiscally conservative group that promotes limited government, declared this week its opposition to the tax cut compromise.
Read more at CNN.
Related posts:
- Strange ideas? Cut Spending!
- FreedomWorks endorses Rand Paul
- Senator McConnell Comments on Elena Kagan: A Political Lawyer
- A Marine Veteran on the Washington Political Machine
- The political fantasyland of the ‘No Labels’ movement
