Evan Thomas on Ending Bush Tax Rates: ‘God Knows the Federal Government Desperately Needs that Revenue’

Newsweek veteran Evan Thomas, who announced a few weeks ago his intention to leave the financially-failing magazine and teach journalism at Princeton, issued a ringing call – in defense of federal spending – for why he hopes Congress and President Obama cannot agree on extending any of the Bush tax cuts, so income tax rates rise next year:

God knows the federal government desperately needs that revenue, so this is one case where I think gridlock is a good thing.

Not exactly in line with the thinking of Tea Party voters. (Audio: MP3 clip)

On this weekend’s Inside Washington, the magazine’s former Washington bureau chief, Assistant Managing Editor and, most-recently, editor-at-large, encapsulated the political/media class’s priority – keeping government spending safe – as he argued:

A couple of weeks ago, Fareed Zakaria wrote a column in which he said Congress should do what it does best, nothing. And what he means by that is if Congress does nothing, those tax cuts go away. We need the revenue, we need the revenue. I know it's not great for the economy right now to be having a tax hike, but you're just returning rates to where they were in the 1990s, when the economy was doing pretty well. God knows the federal government desperately needs that revenue, so this is one case where I think gridlock is a good thing.