Hillary's Surprising Top Priority: the Bush Tax Cuts

I was poking about Hillary Clinton's website, and this is what she lists as her top priority for "strengthening the middle class."

Lower taxes for middle class families by: extending the middle class tax cuts including child tax credit and marriage penalty relief, offering new tax cuts for healthcare, college and retirement, and expanding the [earned income tax credit] and the child care tax credit.

Those tax cuts she is talking about are, of course, the Bush tax cuts. Yet a bit later on the same Web page, she talks about Bush's "fiscal irresponsibility," implying that the Bush tax cuts were fiscally irresponsible. Now letting only the tax reductions on wealthier Americans expire in 2010—as Clinton has said she wants to do—might bring in only an extra $50 billion or so, not counting any negative effects on growth. (Her adviser Dick Gephardt has implied she would keep the investment tax cuts.)

So when you put it all together, what is Clinton really saying? I'm not sure, but I am Googling "cognitive dissonance" right now.

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