http://thinkprogress.org/2010/11/29/cheney-my-vote/<snip>
Unless Congress acts by the end of next month, the Bush tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 are set to expire, with the tax code essentially reverting to where it was under President Bill Clinton. While Democrats and President Obama have said that they want to preserve the tax cuts for the middle-class — saving $830 billion over ten years by allowing the cuts to expire for the richest two percent of Americans — Republicans have steadfastly refused to consider anything but an across-the-board extension.
The expiration of the Bush tax cuts was put into law to mask their long-term cost, and so that they could pass under budget reconciliation rules (and thus not be subjected to a filibuster). Even so, the second round of tax cuts — the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 — barely scraped by in the Senate.
After a tied 50-50 vote, Vice-President Dick Cheney cast the deciding aye to move the Bush tax cuts forward. And in a segment of Brit Hume’s six-hour documentary, The Right, All Along: The Rise, Fall & Future of Conservatism, which aired on Fox News this weekend,
Cheney brags about how his vote was the culmination of a 30 year push to put supply-side economic theory into practice:
I became a believer. If you fast-forward, in 2003, where we cut the capital gains rate, the rate on interest, did the across-the-board cuts in the income tax, and passed by a single vote. My vote.---------
You have been warned President Obama - let those tax cuts expire.