Back in 2003 President Bush passed sweeping tax cuts for the nation’s top wage earners. These tax cuts are scheduled to expire at the end of the year, but Republicans are now pushing President Obama and Democrats to extend these cuts and not allow them to expire.

Republicans are using the excuse that the expiration of these tax cuts would affect countless small businesses throughout the country. They argue that in an already failing economy, we can’t afford to let these businesses, the backbone of the American economy, to go under.

True, we can’t allow these businesses to fail. They are exactly what this country needs. If you’re a small business, in a small town, you’re helping out the economy and yes, you probably do deserve a tax break. Running any business isn’t easy, especially when people don’t have money to spend on it.

However, if you’re one of those people in the top 1% of earners in the country, those people with obscene amounts of money then that’s a different story. How can these people complain about the state the nation is in? How can they justify the argument to extend the tax cuts when they hold the solution, or at least part of it, to our economical problem in their bank accounts?

Many of these people haven’t earned that money through hard work and honesty. Many of them come from old money and have devised ways to keep as much of that money to themselves and out of the hands of the middle and lower class through tax cuts, government loopholes and just plain illegal activity.

When you’re making upwards of $6 million, I think you can afford a 4% tax increase. This wouldn’t even affect these people’s lifestyle. They could still fly across the world at their whim, buy their kids ways into the world’s top schools and basically do whatever they want to do.

The expiration of these tax cuts would amount to roughly a $200 billion tax increase in 2011 alone, and $3.8 trillion over the next 10 years.
With the national debt close to $14 trillion dollars (Can anyone even grasp how large of a number that is?) and rising every day, can we really afford not to let these tax cuts expire?