PORT ANGELES — Clallam County MoveOn members will gather at Rep. Norm Dicks’ office today to urge him to vote against extending tax cuts for the wealthy but support keeping in place cuts for those earning less than $250,000 annually.
It’s a position for which the Belfair Democrat — who represents the 6th Congressional District, which includes the North Olympic Peninsula — has expressed sympathy but with perhaps some adjustments.
MoveOn members will gather at Dicks’ Port Angeles office at 332 E. Fifth St. at 4 p.m., staging a vigil and “speak-out” at the corner of Peabody and Fifth streets.
In a letter to William Kildall, Clallam County MoveOn coordinator, Dicks said that Congress will consider extending tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003, which expire at the end of the year.
Dicks’ letter was a response to one Kildall presented to the congressman’s office Nov. 18.
“Republican leaders in both the House and Senate have endorsed a tax bill that would fully extend all tax cuts, which the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates would cost more than $4 trillion over the next 10 years,” Dicks said, adding that such an action would increase the projected budget deficit and increase the interest payments on the national debt by $950 billion.
“Under this proposal, almost half of the benefit — $1.9 trillion — would go to the richest 2 percent of taxpayers,” Dicks said.
“I am opposed to this expensive and lopsided approach,” he said, adding that he supports a proposal that renews tax cuts for those earning less than $250,000, which would “still represent the largest tax cut in American history.”
However, Dicks said, a third option is under consideration in the face of a weak economy — permanently extending tax cuts for the middle class while approving a temporary, possibly two-year, extension of the remaining tax cuts.
Third option
“While I remain skeptical of the benefits of such an approach . . . it may be considered . . . if strong evidence is provided that maintaining the tax cuts for a short time is necessary to prevent a substantial increase in unemployment,” Dicks said.
Kildall’s Nov. 18 letter said that the “tax gift to the wealthy 2 percent has left the middle class with little or no ‘trickle down’ and a whole lot of indebtedness.
“This has devastated the middle class economically and can no longer be tolerated.”
