"This package would make nearly the entire individual revenue code permanently temporary, which is horrible tax policy."

"On the heels of the work of the fiscal commission ...the White House and members of Congress choose to engage in a negotiation that involves adding increasingly larger amounts to the debt? It's utterly exasperating," said Maya MacGuineas, president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget...
 
...David Walker, former U.S. comptroller general "...this 'deal' is not reasonable from an economic, fiscal and social equity perspective."
 
Walker laments that the package -- which could cost between $800 billion and $900 billion according to unofficial estimates - includes not only extended tax cuts, but new tax cuts and spending increases "none of which are planned to be paid for with spending cuts in other areas."
 
Diane Rogers, chief economist of the Concord Coalition, put it this way: "Rather than mutual sacrifice, it is mutual grabbing. We can never manage to 'trade off' -- we only 'pile on.'"
 
Tax expert Howard Gleckman, meanwhile, called the deal "odious" And he scathingly summarized the negotiations this way: "You have a bad and expensive idea. I have a bad and expensive idea. Let's compromise and pass both of our bad ideas."
 
But more substantively, his main complaint is that the deal would wreck havoc with the tax code.
 
"This package would make nearly the entire individual revenue code permanently temporary, which is horrible tax policy."
 
Jeanne Sahadi