They rarely say it this plainly.

This is remarkable as far as examples of Republican thinking go.

"[Y]ou should never raise taxes in order to cut taxes," Jon Kyl said on Fox News Sunday. "Surely Congress has the authority, and it would be right to -- if we decide we want to cut taxes to spur the economy, not to have to raise taxes in order to offset those costs. You do need to offset the cost of increased spending, and that's what Republicans object to. But you should never have to offset cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans."

So, you have to state how you are going to fund things like social security, but one should never have to cost tax cuts, especially tax cuts for the rich.

Imagine talking this way about any other programme? You would literally be laughed out of the room if you stated that, as a point of principle, you did not think that the cost of that programme had to be accounted for.

Fire Dog Lake:

So what we’re seeing is an organized Republican campaign to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, implicitly relying on the same Keynsian stimulus rationale they’ve violently argued against when it comes to spending to save teachers, rebuild infrastructure and rescue the unemployed.

So Republicans claim they want to eliminate the budget deficits, because deficits are per se a threat to the economy and responsible government, and because they just cause jobless people to be lazy and cause states to hire too many firemen and police and teachers . . . but the deficit hysterics make an exception for that part of deficits caused by the Bush tax cuts, which are, uh, different, because you can never give too many entitlements to the wealthy.

The stimulus failed in the eyes of the Republicans, but it will work if the deficit is increased by continuing Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy.

As Tomasky points out here, they rarely say this as clearly as Kyl is stating it here.

As you probably know, Republicans in Congress having been blocking the extension of unemployment benefits for 1.2 million Americans on the grounds that doing so would increase the deficit. All spending, they insist, must be offset by like-sized cuts so that everything washes out as deficit neutral.

Turns out there's an exception to this, and it's guess what? Tax cuts for the rich.

So much for their concern about the deficit.... that goes out the window when it comes to giving the richest people in society tax breaks.

Tags: Republicans, greed, deficit, economy, Kyl