Bruce Bartlett (The Fiscal Times), How Obama Misplayed the Tax Card Against Republicans:

President Obama hasn’t played his cards well on tax policy. He’s backed himself into a corner and allowed the Republicans to define the terms of the debate, missing the opportunity to help himself and the economy by putting forward a different tax strategy. …

According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, the total tax increase would come to $227 billion in the event that Congress does not act at all and every expiring tax provision disappears. The table below shows that those with lower to middle incomes would suffer the largest tax increase in percentage terms.

Distributional Effects of Allowing All Expiring Tax Provisions to Expire, 2011
	Increase in Federal Taxes
Income Category	Millions of Dollars	Percent
Less than $10,000	117	1.0
$10,000 – $20,000	3,721	19.9
$20,000 – $30,000	11,654	20.8
$30,000 – $40,000	12,869	14.1
$40,000 – $50,000	11,238	10.6
$50,000 – $75,000	26,705	9.2
$75,000 – $100,000	28,517	9.8
$100,000 – $200,000	62,309	10.6
$200,000 – $500,000	26,871	8.7
$500,000 – $1 million	10,620	8.3
$1 million and over	32,708	11.0
Total, all taxpayers	227,330	10.4
Source: Joint Committee on Taxation (July 30, 2010)

Republicans … are guilty of being unserious about either the deficit or tax policy. Their mantra is that all the Bush tax cuts should simply be extended permanently, as if they are the greatest thing since sliced bread. But as I explained in a recent column, there is really no evidence that they did much of anything to raise economic growth. Moreover, the fact that they were always designed to expire makes Republican claims that Obama’s policies are the primary source of economic uncertainty ring hollow. If Republicans really wanted to give taxpayers certainty on what their taxes will be next year, they should have worked a lot harder to make all provisions of the Tax Code permanent, instead of so often making them temporary in order to disguise the budgetary cost of their initiatives.