This is historical material “frozen in time”. The website is no longer updated and links to external websites and some internal pages may not work.

Search form

White House White Board: CEA Chair Austan Goolsbee Explains the Tax Cut Fight

Summary: 
Introducing White House White Board, in which one of our key players on the White House team will cut through the political back-and-forth you hear every day and break down an issue affecting American families into simple, understandable terms.

Today we're trying out something new -- White House White Board, in which one of our key players on the White House team will cut through the political back-and-forth you hear every day and break down an issue affecting American families into simple, understandable terms.  Today, Austan Goolsbee, the new Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers here at the White House, tackles the tax cut fight and what it means that Congressional Republicans are "holding middle class tax cuts hostage" as the President has said:

[[nid:21450]]

Key points and links:

  • Under President Obama’s plan,  all Americans would receive a tax cut on the first $250,000 of their income.  Every middle class family would receive the immediate certainty and comfort of knowing their tax cuts were permanently extended. Every American making more than $250,000 per year they would receive a tax cut on the first $250,000 of their income.
  • Instead of working to give middle class families this immediate certainty and comfort, Congressional Republicans are continuing to hold that relief hostage in order to have our nation borrow $700 billion that we can’t afford to provide an average tax cut of $100,000 to millionaires and billionaires.
  • We simply can’t afford to give the wealthiest Americans these big tax cuts that would add to our deficit and, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, be just about the least effective way to grow our economy and help create jobs.