Support S. 3412, the Middle Class Tax Cut Act
Recipient: U.S. Senate
Dear Senator:
On behalf of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, we urge you to support cloture on S. 3412, the Middle Class Tax Cut Act. S. 3412 strikes a fair and responsible balance between keeping taxes low for the overwhelming majority of Americans, on one hand, and ensuring fiscal soundness and preserving the basic functions of government, on the other. We will include your vote on cloture in our voting records for the 112th Congress.
As a coalition of more than 210 national civil and human rights organizations concerned with our economy, jobs, protecting critical services for lower- and middle-class Americans, and meeting our fiscal challenges, we believe that the portion of tax cuts signed into law by President George W. Bush that benefit the richest two percent of Americans must be allowed to expire at the end of this year. It is time to begin to restore some basic fairness to our tax system.
Ending the Bush-era tax cuts for the richest two percent of Americans, households with incomes over $250,000, is simply asking them to pay their fair share. Contrary to straw-man arguments that some have made, we do not denigrate financial success or support “class warfare.” While we are troubled by the fact that the gap between the richest households and everyone else in the U.S. has widened to historically high levels, we are even more troubled by the fact that the Bush tax cuts for wealthier Americans have exploded the deficit and failed to result in economic growth.
We simply cannot afford to continue fiscally irresponsible tax breaks for the richest two percent and simultaneously address critical national priorities like improving the quality of and access to our education system, strengthening Medicare, creating jobs, improving our infrastructure, and helping millions of families that are still struggling to make ends meet. We as a nation will be forced to borrow more money, adding to deficits, increasing the interest we must pay on our debt, and making it harder to effectively address our significant long-term fiscal challenges.
At the same time, we also urge you to reject any effort to extend all of the Bush-era tax cuts, or even to extend them up to the $1 million income level. With the threshold set at $250,000, 98 percent of Americans would receive their full tax cuts next year, and all Americans would continue to benefit from a lower tax rate on their first $250,000 in income.
For these reasons, we urge you to support cloture on S. 3412. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact either of us or Senior Counsel Rob Randhava at (202) 466-6058. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Wade Henderson
President & CEO
Nancy Zirkin
Executive Vice President