-- Both parties are calling for extending unemployment benefits, but the GOP amendments called for making those jobless benefits tax-free.
-- The Democrats' massive $500 billion infrastructure spending plan will balloon the budget deficit to nearly $2 trillion this year, but Democrats plan to cut the deficit by raising taxes when the economy recovers.
Republicans also sought to put language in the stimulus bill that would preclude "any tax increases now or in the future to pay for this new spending." Instead of raising taxes, the GOP believes "any stimulus spending should be paid for by reducing other government spending, not raising taxes."
-- Instead of raising capital gains and dividends as Obama proposed in his campaign, Republicans want to make both rates permanent and then index capital gains for inflation to boost capital investment in the economy.
This is the message Republicans are selling: Cut taxes to unleash the power of free enterprise and American productivity to create jobs, and cut federal spending to slow the growth of government that has weakened the economy.
All of this is good as far as it goes, but supply-side conservatives over at the House Republican Study Committee, now chaired by hard-charging Rep. Tom Price of Georgia, think their plan can do even better.
Price's hardy band of tax-cutters wants a permanent 5 percent across-the-board income tax cut. They also want to boost the $1,000 per child tax credit to $5,000 starting in 2008 that would "provide a substantial, immediate tax cut for middle-class families."
They are also calling for the repeal of the Alternative Minimum Tax for Individuals (AMT), and making all withdrawals from IRAs tax- and penalty-free in 2009 to allow hard-pressed taxpayers during the recession to have free access to their savings.
Plus, they want to allow businesses to take full and immediate expensing deductions on their tax returns, cut the corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent and make the research-and-development tax credit permanent.
This is the kind of tax-cut-driven, capital-growth economic-recovery plan that is needed to get this $14 trillion economy back on track and lift the global economy along with it.
It's time the network news shows gave the GOP's tax cuts the attention they and the American people deserve. Barack Obama and his economic advisers might even learn a thing of two about economics if they did.