Who'll pay off the deficit?

If you believe the Bush tax cuts should be made permanent - as we do - you might want to be careful about falling into a little hypocritical pit.

While many middle class Americans rebuke the Bush tax cuts as extra gravy for the rich, thereby depriving the federal treasury of badly needed dollars, these same people may soon be aghast to find out that a precious tax benefit of their own is about to expire.

The "Making Work Pay" tax credit, included last year in President Obama's stimulus package, reduces the amount of tax kept out of each paycheck. The little extra chunk that shows up in net pay every two weeks isn't small potatoes: In a year it adds up to $400 for most single filers and up to $800 for most joint filers.

The Making Work Pay credit assists 110 million?families - more than three out of every four American households - with the full benefit going to every taxpayer earning $75,000 or less. Those making more still qualify for a partial credit. Both the Bush tax cuts and the Making Work Pay credit are set to expire at the end of this year.

Here's where the potential for hypocrisy comes in.

It's easy to say the guy next door, in the nicer house and with the newer car, should pay a heftier percentage of the tax burden while ours should remain stable or perhaps decrease. All of us want someone else to balance the federal budget, don't we? Well, who's ready to step up now and shell out more tax dollars for the good of the nation? Who's ready to hand back an extra $35 cash every month that for the past year and a half has become a standard feature of our net pay?

We thought so. That's one very short line.

Fortunately, most Americans can probably have their way and perhaps even bridge some political gaps on these two taxing matters. In his $3.8 trillion 2011 budget, President Obama has requested a year-long extension to the Making Work Pay credit, knowing that the devastating effects of the Great Recession linger still in most households. Much to the amazement of some conservatives, the president has also included in his budget a provision that would make the Bush tax cuts permanent, except those households earning more than $250,000 annually.

We're believers that the economy is most sound when people have more money to spend and the government has less. Making permanent the Bush tax cuts and extending the Making Work Pay credit for another year makes fiscal sense.