The bitter fight over tax cuts between Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Senate is taking a new turn as Iowa Senator Tom Harkin co-sponsors a Democrat alternative plan. Harkin says his party’s proposal would be “fair, fast-acting and fiscally responsible,” three attributes he says the Republican version lacks.Harkin says the “Democratic Plan for Jobs, Opportunity and Prosperity” will concentrate benefits now and bring three times the economic boost immediately as the Republican plan. Harkin says the massive tax breaks proposed by the majority party will help primarily millionaires, though he says Republicans keep claiming the package will help fix America’s economic woes. Harkin says President Bush’s tax cuts of 2001 were touted as being the solution for stimulating the economy and creating jobs, but we’re now in the longest period of continued job losses since the Great Depression. Harkin says the latest tax cut plan is just “more of the same failed policies of the past.” Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, a Republican, chairs the Senate Finance Committee which is working with a plan to cut taxes between 400-billion and 550-billion dollars.
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