George W. Bush and John Boehner

(Reuters/Jim Young)



Republicans continue to say they won't even come to the negotiating table for a long-term agreement on fiscal policy if taxes are part of the discussion.

Fine! If they want to act like little babies, let them! Because if we don't do anything about taxes, if we just follow current law, then all the Bush tax cuts will expire at the end of 2012. And that wouldn't be such a bad thing. In fact, it would be a pretty good thing, erasing three-quarters of our medium-term deficit problem. Certainly, it's a great place to start negotiations.

Letting the Bush tax cuts expire isn't the ideal solution. Yesterday, President Obama proposed a superior alternative: raising revenue by reforming and simplifying the tax code, using as a baseline assumption the expiration of Bush's high-income tax cuts.

But even though it's not ideal, allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire—all them—is far better than the Republican proposal of paying for additional tax cuts for the wealthy by eliminating Medicare. With Republicans insisting it be their way or the the highway, the highway is a clear and easy choice.

If that's where we're headed, with Republicans refusing to negotiate, and insisting on making this a choice between ending Medicare as we know it and returning to the tax rates of the Clinton era, most Americans will choose the latter. And everybody who is paying any attention to this debate knows it.