Ms. Pelosi wants Obama to repeal the tax cuts:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is urging the incoming Obama administration to stick to its campaign pledge and immediately increase taxes on the wealthiest Americans, a position that President-elect Barack Obama has wavered on since winning election.

Pelosi told reporters today that she “couldn’t be more clear” in opposing some Obama advisers’ wish to wait for the tax cuts on the highest income earners to expire in two years, as they are set to do under current law. “Put me down as clearly as you possibly can as one who wants to have those tax cuts for the wealthiest in America repealed,” she said.

Pelosi said the income tax cuts to the highest earning Americans — which were decreased from 39.6 to 35 percent as part of the 2001 Bush tax plan — have been “the biggest contributor to the budget deficit,” which now stands at $1.2 trillion for fiscal year 2009. That deficit figure does not include the impact of the pending stimulus measure, which will cost around $800 billion, nor does it include estimates for supplemental spending bills that will come later this year to finance the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I’ve two things to say to Ms. Pelosi.

First, the President (or President-Elect, in this case) does not decide when to raise or lower taxes. Congress does. You know, that place that she’s in charge of? If she wants them repealed, pass a bill. If he vetoes it, test out that “super majority” she thinks she has and override it.

Second of all, her comment that the tax cuts on the rich were “the biggest contributor to the budget deficit” is absolute horse-hooey. The reason for the deficit is the spending, not the tax cuts. But, just as they tried to do with Reagan, they’re blaming deficits on tax policy that substantially increased the tax revenues.

Congress has a penchant for seeing more money coming in and then blowing it on wasteful programs. That used to be limited to liberal majorities, but over the last few years Republicans jumped on that bandwagon as well. So-called conservatives that knew better than to waste money the way they did went ahead and did it anyway, and now find themselves in the minority because of that behavior. Which is fine by me.

Don’t worry, though, Ms. Pelosi. You Obamessiah will most certainly raise taxes, but it won’t just be on the wealthy. He’ll raise them across the board, blaming it on the poor economy and the like. The only “tax cuts” we’ll be seeing is his Robin Hood approach: taking from the taxpayers and giving to the taxeaters. That’s nothing new, liberal politicians have been doing that for the last forty years, but Obama, mark my words, is going to do it on a scale so huge that it’s going to make the last two generations look like child’s play.