White House economic advisor takes to the whiteboard to sell Obama’s tax cut deal
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Whiteboards and finance go together like Wall Street and bonuses. So as the White House seeks support for its tax cut deal, top Obama administration economic advisor Austan Goolsbee has pulled out the markers to try to make the sale to the public and recalcitrant liberals.
In a new video posted Thursday, Goolsbee, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, rolls up his shirtsleeves and uses a whiteboard to make the case that Obama got much more than Republicans in the deal to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for two years.
On the left side he lists his view of Republican priorities: tax cuts for the ‘top 2%’ of wage earners, including income taxes and estate taxes.
On the right side he writes President Obama’s priorities, a much longer list that includes a two-year extension of tax cuts for the ‘other 98%’ of taxpayers, funding for unemployment insurance, the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Child Tax Credit, the American Opportunity Tax Credit and a new payroll tax break for workers. Goolsbee also lists more investment, generated by extensions of the research and development tax credit and other business tax breaks.
‘These things are key to the short-run recovery of the economy and getting the growth rate up, and I will point out that these Obama tax cuts are more than twice as big as the high-income tax cuts in this short period,’ Goolsbee says. He also argues that because the cuts are targeted and temporary, they will have ‘no impact on the long-run deficit facing the country.’
That might be technically true, but as Don Lee pointed out in The Times on Thursday, the tax-cut deal has a big impact on the overall deficit.
Goolsbee, though, is focused on the short-term. He says Obama got more in the deal than anyone expected -- and much of what he got will stimulate the economy.
‘The fact is we’re going to grow our way out of these problems, and the foundation of that growth is going to be right here,’ he says, sliding his marker down the list of Obama priorities for emphasis.
-- Jim Puzzanghera
