I thought that I was done talking about David Meeks and the constant stream of misinformed ignorance that he spews on Twitter. I mean, that was my plan anyway. Then I see the following:
RT @DuncanBaird Avg middle-income Ark family will see a sizable tax incr when the Bush tax cuts expire. http://j.mp/8Z0dqn @taxfoundation
Shortly thereafter, Meeks followed up with:
Are @ArkDems for letting the Bush Tax Cuts expire and adding an avg of $1400 to Arkansans tax bill? #argop
I’m going to guess that, in keeping with his well-documented aversion to critical thinking, Meeks simply didn’t read the contents of the link in the first Tweet. For, if he had, he would have seen this (emphasis mine):
Note that in this report, we do not present the results under the proposed policies of President Obama, although in most circumstances (with the possible exception of some high-income congressional districts), the “average middle-income” family would not see much difference between the president’s proposal and the scenario of Bush-era tax cuts extended. (Technically, most families falling in the middle of income distribution would see lower tax bills under the proposed policies in the president’s budget when compared to a mere extension of the Bush-era tax cuts for 2011 due to his proposed one-year extension of the Making Work Pay tax credit, which was labeled in the president’s budget as a “temporary economic recovery” measure.)
If we assume that even the obstructionists in the Party of No care more about tax savings for the average family in this study, then there is no reason to assume that President Obama’s proposal would not get passed, thereby actually saving this group MORE money in 2011 than under the Bush cuts.
Then again, if we assume that the contrarians in Congress are going to continue to poo-poo absolutely everything Democrats try to do, even when the measure would benefit the very people they continually lie to claim to represent, the issue is not whether the Democrats want to increase taxes on the average family. Rather, the question becomes whether the Republicans are so married to the idea of massive tax breaks for the top 2% of earners that they would throw the average family under the proverbial bus with a Bush-cuts-or-nothing approach?
If you’ve been paying attention, you know the answer to that last part.