Former Obama Budget Advisor Blasts Plan to Let Bush Tax Cuts Expire

As press secretary Robert Gibbs noted this morning, The White House's official position is that today's poor economy doesn't hurt rich people, and thus Bush-era tax cuts for higher earners don't need to be extended.

On the contrary, writes former Obama budget advisor Peter Orszag.  In his new role as New York Times columnist, Orszag used his first piece to slam the administration's plan to allow tax rates to go up as the Bush tax cuts expire, and instead calls for a two-year extension of all Bush tax cuts -- including those for the nation's most wealthy.

"[T]he best approach is a compromise: extend the tax cuts for two years and then end them altogether," he wrote. "Ideally only the middle-class tax cuts would be continued for now. Getting a deal in Congress, though, may require keeping the high-income tax cuts, too. And that would still be worth it."