President Obama and the Democratic leadership had the plan of letting the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire.  Somehow the Republicans managed to scare a few people into thinking that this expiration would harm the economy that is in recession.

My idea was to make it explicit that the money from the expired tax cuts could be redeployed in more economically stimulative ways than giving the money to the wealthy.

The longer President Obama and the Democratic leadership delays in taking up this idea, the more they lose even conservative Democrats from their cause.

I can see that my first way of phrasing the plan was not clear enough.  Obama has to change his plan so that he takes the money from the tax cut to the wealthy and uses it instead to raise the tax cut to the middle and lower classes.  This clearly sinks the idea that letting the tax cut expire will harm the fragile economy.

In the hands of the wealthy, this tax cut money either gets loaned back to the government in the purchase of treasury bonds or it gets invested in creating jobs in other countries.  What better way to stimulate the economy than to give the money to the people who will spend it locally to create jobs here?

For such a canny politician as Obama proved to be in the Presidential campaign, you wouldn’t think that it would take someone like me to lead him by the hand to the obvious solution.

By the way, if the picture is too small on your screen to see exactly what kind of animal I am leading to water, hover your mouse over the picture and read the title.

If they lose the argument over this tax policy issue, it would make me wonder what happened to their political smarts.

On September 17, The Worcester Telegram & Gazette published my  letter to the editor.