Florida CFO and Democratic candidate for governor Alex Sink broke with her party Tuesday and said that she favors extending the Bush tax cuts. It’s an easy stand for her to take since the governor has no control over federal tax rates.
In Delray Beach today, she said, “I support the extension of the Bush tax cuts because to let them expire is going to hurt our ability to get people back to work,” Sink said. “We need to do everything we can to put people back to work. So that’s why I support the extension of the Bush tax cuts.”
Congress would vote to extend the Bush tax cuts, not the governor of Florida.
According to the CBO, extending high-income tax cuts would cost $826 billion, and Mark Zandi of Economy.com wrote that the Bush tax cuts would only create about 32 cents of economic activity out of every dollar of lost revenue. President Obama and most national Democrats favor letting the tax cuts for those making more than $250,000 a year expire but extending the middle-class tax cuts.
Nevertheless, extending the Bush tax cuts is popular. A Rasmussen survey in early August found that 54 percent of Americans favored extending all of the Bush tax cuts, with a plurality favoring extending them for all Americans when the option of letting those for the “wealthy” expire, and 51 percent think that letting the tax cuts expire will hurt the economy.
Sink’s Republican opponent, former health care executive Rick Scott, has used President Obama’s endorsement of her in a negative ad and called her a “socialist” and an “Obamacrat.” Supporting more tax cuts seems like a way to deflect some of this criticism.
Luke Johnson reports on Florida for The American Independent.
