It's a dessert topping, it's a floor wax, it's both!!

Ezra examines the many and varied ways that the Republicans tout the Bush tax cuts.

Republicans have taken something of an infomercial approach to extending the Bush tax cuts. It's not just that they lower tax rates. They also stimulate the economy, increase revenue, shrink government, encourage small businesses, keep the feds from buying private companies, and allow corporations to plan for the future. No word, as of yet, on whether they will blend.
 
But there's a reason I don't use a blender to listen to the radio or a cloth to cover my house. And there's a reason you don't want to use a raft of tax cuts meant to lower marginal rates as a way to reduce the deficit, which they wouldn't do, or stimulate the economy and encourage small businesses, which they would do poorly.

If you want to help small businesses, cutting taxes for rich individuals -- some of whom file as small businesses -- is an awful way to do it. The average business income on a 1040 is $40,000. Extending the tax cuts for filers making more than $250,000 isn't going to do much for small businesses. But you know what would do a lot for small businesses? The small-business bill, which spends tens of billions of dollars opening lines of credit to small businesses that want to expand. And you know why we don't have a small-business bill? Because Republicans are filibustering it.

Similarly, a bill to reduce the deficit would do a good job of reducing the deficit. The Bush tax cuts, by contrast, will add about $4 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years. A bill designed to stimulate the economy could do quite a bit to stimulate the economy. But the Bush tax cuts weren't designed to stimulate the economy, and so they're not good at it: You only get about 32 cents of stimulus for every dollar you spend, as opposed to a payroll tax cut or job-creation tax credit, both of which give you about $1.25.

The issue isn't that the Bush tax cuts do nothing but lower marginal tax rates. It's that they do the other things poorly, as those weren't things they were designed to do. Republicans, faced with the expiration date that they passed into law, are now grabbing every argument in the area to support an extension. But the tax cuts don't slice, dice and juice. If Congress wants to, say, help small businesses, it should pass the legislation it's considering to do exactly that. If it wants to reduce the deficit, or stimulate the economy, it should design a bill suited to that purpose. It shouldn't extend the tax cuts as some sort of fourth-best alternative.