Tax Cut Deal: Sanders’ Filibuster; Clinton’s Defense; Democrats’ Anger

Sunday’s talk shows were, of course, full of conversation about the package, which Democrats said was too expensive and gives away too much and which Republicans said did not go far enough. On Fox News Sunday, Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who will be the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said that to many Democrats, the sticking point of the package arrived at by Obama and McConnellwas the change to the estate tax. The proposed legislation would tax estates over $5 million at a rate of 35%; Democrats want a 45% tax rate on estates over $3.5 million. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., who will take over the chairmanship of the House Budget Committee, implied that Republicans would let the deal die if Democrats tried to change it; he added that they would then return to the issue once they take office in January, when they will pass all the tax cuts and “do it retroactively.”

Juan Williams, Fox News contributor, pointed out that taxes on the wealthy are at their lowest in 60 years. “But you’d never know that listening to the Republicans in this country,” Williams said.

On Meet the Press, Austan Goolsbee, chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, defended the deal when host David Gregory pointed out that Ron Brownstein, in his National Journal column, criticized the potential of the Bush tax cuts as creators of jobs: “[This deal] further entrenches the Bush tax cuts, even though the median income and the number of Americans with jobs are lower today than when the tax cuts were originally signed in 2001 (an almost unprecedented decade-long record of futility).” However, Goolsbee also said that evidence shows high-income tax cuts are ineffective as job creators, and “that's a bitter pill to have to deal with.”