The tax plan put forward this week by Republican leaders in Congress would add nearly $4 trillion to the national debt and would be offset only by a $300 billion spending freeze, a Washington Post analysis states.
While the cost of the Tax Hike Prevention Act of 2010 hasn't been calculated yet, the Post reports that a similar but "slightly more expensive" plan analyzed by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office found it would cost $3.9 trillion over 10 years, making it roughly four times as expensive as the Democrats' health reforms, which will cost less than $1 trillion over the same period.
The Republican tax bill, introduced this week by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), aims to prevent the Democratic-controlled Congress from letting the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 expire. The tax reductions will expire at the end of the year if they are not extended.
The Post notes that an accompanying spending freeze proposed by McConnell would save $300 billion, which the newspaper describes as a "drop in the bucket" compared to the cost of the tax cut extension.
The plan's hefty price tag, coming at a time when many in the Republican grassroots are growing alarmed about skyrocketing budget deficits, has provided the Democrats with fuel for the mid-term elections, as they seek to paint the GOP as dishonest or hypocritical when claiming to be the party of fiscal responsibility...............
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