The major debate headed into the midterm elections is the state of the Bush tax cuts. Why this is a debate is a bit puzzling. If Republicans, when in power, wanted to make the tax cuts permanent, they shouldn’t have allowed them to sunset after ten years. They have nobody to blame but themselves. Witness John Boehner trying to wiggle out of this:

At a meeting with Congressional leaders of both parties, Mr. Obama vowed that Democrats would extend current income tax rates except for the wealthiest taxpayers. But Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, said the tax cuts should be extended for everyone or else many small business owners would get hit with a big tax bill –- a contention that Mr. Obama disputed [...]

Mr. Obama, who did not join the Senate until 2005, reminded Mr. Boehner and the Senate Republican leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, that the tax cuts’ architects purposely left the deficit problem to a future administration, according to aides from both parties.

“I wasn’t there,” Mr. Boehner quickly countered. “I didn’t structure that deal.”

The room briefly went quiet as participants seemed to ponder that statement from a legislator first elected in 1990. “How long have you been here?,” a Democrat asked Mr. Boehner, and the others broke out in laughter.

Pass the buck, deny responsibility, etc.

The rest of Boehner’s lament is that “raising taxes” (which is what we call allowing tax cuts passed by Republicans to expire nowadays) would kill jobs and economic recovery. But a new report from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities shows that to be false:

Letting President Bush’s tax cuts for families making over $250,000 expire as scheduled at the end of 2010, while temporarily redirecting this money to more efficient ways of boosting the economy while it is weak, would help the nation address two key challenges: short-term economic weakness (with nearly one in ten Americans out of work) and unsustainable long-term deficits.

Over the next year or two, policymakers could channel the savings from letting the tax cuts expire — about $40 billion in 2011 — to uses that have more “bang for the buck” in creating jobs and promoting growth. For example, Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis suggests that using those savings for a combination of a job-creation tax credit and continued state fiscal assistance would generate three times as much additional economic activity as using them to extend the high-income tax cuts.

Over the longer term, allowing these high-end tax cuts to expire on schedule would produce substantial deficit-reduction savings. (Policymakers could dedicate the short-term as well as the long-term savings to deficit reduction if they cannot agree on other short-term uses of the funds to boost the economy.)

Extending tax cuts for the wealthy is about the worst possible stimulus you can get, on a statistical basis. State fiscal assistance, extending unemployment benefits or even a job hiring tax credit – heck, even a payroll tax holiday – would massively outstrip tax cuts for multi-millionaires, most of which goes into their war chest.

Similarly, an entrepreneur said yesterday that the tax changes would have no impact on his business.

And, not only are economists behind the strategy, so is the public. 58% of Americans, including 40% of Democrats, favor repealing the tax cuts for the wealthy, if not all of the tax cuts. This was precisely the strategy on which the 2008 campaign was waged, and Democrats won.

This is not only a winnable fight, it’s solid politics. Let gridlock work, let the tax cuts expire.

UPDATE: Heck, the WaPo editorial board came out in favor of letting the tax cuts for the wealthy expire. Fish gotta swim, Republicans gotta whine, but it’s important to note that they are on the wrong side of just about everyone here.