Even the biggest proponent of the free market and smaller government, Alan Greenspan says that lower taxes are better, but not using borrowed money.
The tax cuts were only put in place by Bush (other than idealogical reasons, which I will ignore) because Alan supported them. Economists were predicting surpluses in the US economy for many years to come. This would have caused a "distortion" so it was decided that the cuts would be a good idea.
Obviously the situation has changed now.
There are many arguments for leaving the tax cuts in place, I will give the rebuttal to them:
- Economic recovery will enable the US to pay down their debt: The consensus is that the economic recovery is very far away, and the US is building (or has already built) unsustainable debt levels in the meantime
- The Reagan theory of "starving big government" by continually reducing revenues: We can see that this hasn't worked, especially since the abolishment of the policy to reduce government spending by the same amount as any tax cut implemented
- The singular and most common argument, that it will stunt the recovery: you cannot have a recovery so heavily based on borrowed money, it could and will come and bite you in the ass. The devaluation of the US dollar is the most obvious consequence.
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