Writing in the New York Times, former Obama budget director Peter Orszag makes the case for extending the Bush-era tax cuts.
"In the face of the dueling deficits, the best approach is a compromise: extend the tax cuts for two years and then end them altogether. Ideally only the middle-class tax cuts would be continued for now. Getting a deal in Congress, though, may require keeping the high-income tax cuts, too. And that would still be worth it."
"Why does this combination make sense? The answer is that over the medium
term, the tax cuts are simply not affordable. Yet no one wants to make
an already stagnating jobs market worse over the next year or two, which
is exactly what would happen if the cuts expire as planned."