Six months until the largest tax hike in history...

[finnbow]

In my opinion, it's disingenuous to call the expiration of a tax cut that was only passed due to the fact that it had a sunset clause in it a tax hike. If Bush and Co. had wanted to make it permanent, why didn't they write it that way to begin with and engage the public debate on that basis?

That said, I think there are fair number of those tax breaks that probably should remain and some that shouldn't and each should be debated on its own merits. However, we need to finally get past the notion that we can have it all and not have to pay for it. Hell, Dubya passed these tax cuts at the same time he was launching two wars. He thought everything would balance out as long as we "went shopping."