Divided Republicans Struggle Over Size of Tax and Spending Cuts

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that households with more than $100,000 in income would reap three-quarters of the benefits from the $90 billion tax-cut package. The center estimated that the top one percent of U.S. wage earners received about 43 percent of the benefits from Bush's $1.35 billion tax cut enacted in 2001.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=a_dlJMp0BdZE
Divided Republicans Struggle Over Size of Tax and Spending Cuts

By Laura Litvan

Dec. 13 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Representatives Jeff Flake and Mike Castle represent the factions pulling the Republican Party in opposite directions -- and threatening its decade-long unity -- as they battle over how deeply to cut taxes and federal spending on the poor.
Flake, 42, of Arizona, belongs to the 100-member Republican Study Committee. Its members backed a tax-cut package totaling almost $90 billion, and most want even more than the $50 billion in spending reductions that the House has approved in the past month. Castle, 66, of Delaware, belongs to the 40-member Tuesday Group, most of whom seek to limit spending reductions in anti- poverty programs and are wary of tax cuts that would increase the federal deficit.
While both factions cite the need to reduce the deficit -- $319 billion in fiscal 2005 -- as justifying their positions, the split threatens their ability to accomplish it. ``The more the conservatives push to reduce the deficit by cutting domestic programs, the more the moderates resist,'' said Eric Uslaner, a professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland.
Flake's faction points to the explosion of government spending under Republican rule: The Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based research organization, says spending has surged 33 percent since Bush was inaugurated in 2001, reaching a peacetime record of $22,000 per U.S. household. Members of Castle's group cite the deficit as a reason to be skeptical of new tax cuts -- and are concerned about Democratic attacks over the cuts' tilt toward the wealthy. <snip>

or bang my head against a wall. These are fiscal conservatives!? Balance the budget - NOW!