The Club For Growth, Heritage Foundation, the lovely and talented Michelle Bachmann and Dr. Tom (Coburn), as well as many of their allies on the extreme right, are opposed to the tax cut deal, principally because it extends unemployment benefits without "paying for it"?
Well, we could solve that problem with....a tax increase on upper income brackets! But the Club For Growth and everyone in the Republican Party has take the pledge--no tax increases ever, under any circumstances.
I understand the consistent opposition to any sort of tax increase; for true believers, it's a matter of religious faith, unaffected by contrary real-world evidence, and for the rest of the party, it's either almost willful ignorance about economic/financial facts or a careerist choice to go with the single most important Republican dogma (a departure from which will spell doom within the Party and its associated circles). Among Republicans--many of whom, I think, are not really true believers--anyone who goes off the reservation on this issue will cease to have a viable political career and will have a tough time arranging for the typical post-Congressional career as a lobbyist, think tank employee, conservative columnist, etc.
But even for the true believers, the objection to the compromise based on not paying for the unemployment benefits is breathtakingly hypocritical. Even these religious nuts have to understand that (a) a modest tax increase on upper bracket incomes would have paid for the unemployment benefits, with no significant adverse effect on either those wealthy individuals or the economy as a whole, but they choose not to go that route; and (b) to complain about not funding unemployment benefits while advocating unfunded tax cuts for the wealthy is inherently contradictory. Both will increase the deficit in the short run, if not the long run. (At least, unemployment benefits will have the effect of putting most of that money right back into the economy.)
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