Talk About In Your Face: Check Out The Article Below & Give Your Input

Normally I can read a news story and provide some reasonable perspective to give further context. But this just leaves me speechless:

Senate Republicans will press this week to extend tax cuts for affluent
families scheduled to expire Jan. 1, but the same Republican tax plan
would allow a series of tax cuts for the working poor and the middle
class to end next year.

Republicans
say the tax breaks for lower-income families — passed with little
notice in the extensive 2009 economic stimulus law — were always
supposed to be temporary. But President Obama had made them a priority
in 2009 and demanded their extension in 2010 as a price for extending
the Bush-era tax cuts for two years, and both the White House and Senate
Democrats are determined to extend them again.

That
sets up a potentially tricky issue for Republicans. They have said they
do not want taxes to go up on anyone while the economy struggles to
gain altitude, but under their plan, written by Senator Orrin G. Hatch
of Utah, the senior Republican on the Finance Committee, about 13
million families would see their tax refunds reduced, and some would see
their taxes increase.

“Senator
Hatch’s amendment would extend tax breaks for the top 2 percent of
Americans,” Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, who leads the Senate’s
Democratic majority, said this month. “But it fails to extend a number
of tax cuts that help middle-class families get by in a tough economy.”

The
tax showdown is set for Wednesday, when the Senate will vote on whether
to take up Democratic legislation to extend Bush-era middle-class tax
cuts through 2013. The motion will need 60 votes to pass, and only if it
gets those votes will Republicans be given a chance to vote on their
alternative tax plan. The House will vote next week on a similar
Republican plan that also allows the 2009 stimulus cuts to lapse.

Let's
be very clear here: we are still in the middle of deep economic
recession and high unemployment caused by reckless casino capitalism.
Economic inequality is at record levels for the modern era.

And
Republicans are flat-out running on a campaign of lowering taxes on the
super rich while raising them on lower and middle incomes. Rather than
being an insane, devastating and unthinkable political platform, it is
simply called "tricky." The political party advancing this platform has
an even chance to win the Presidency, and a better than even chance to
win the Senate and hold onto the House.

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/1048513/republic...