Steny Hoyer Questions Extending Bush Tax Cuts

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said Tuesday the House will not attempt to pass a budget dictating spending guidelines for the 2011 fiscal year -- and may balk at permanently extending certain tax cuts. The absence of a budget is not as startling as it sounds at first blush, but the tax talk raises a tough issue for Democrats in an election year as Republicans battle to reclaim control of Congress.

Hoyer, top lieutenant to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said tax increases will eventually be needed to deal with the nation's growing national debt, the Associated Press reported. In the short-term, he questioned when the government can afford to permanently extend the tax cuts enacted under President Bush, which are set to expire at the end of the year. President Obama has proposed keeping them for families making less than $250,000 annually and for individuals earning under $200,000. But that would come at a cost.

"It's now official," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said. "Top Democrats on Capitol Hill are starting to signal their intention to raise taxes on the middle class."

As for the budget resolution, it is not a spending package but rather a blueprint for the appropriations and authorization committees that actually dish out the taxpayer dollars. The annual resolution, which has been put aside by Congress in previous years, is an internal document designed to set parameters for the other panels.

Hoyer (D-Md.) said the House will instead rely on a "budget enforcement resolution" to keep control of discretionary spending on programs other than the Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid entitlements, according to Fox News. He argued that it made more sense to wait and see what President Obama's commission on deficit reduction recommends later this year. "It isn't possible to debate and pass a realistic, long-term budget until we've considered the bipartisan commission's deficit-reduction plan," he said in a speech before the Third Way, a think tank with a moderate Democratic orientation.