Oops — GOP Pushes Study Showing that Dems’ Tax Plans Superior

Greg Sargent:

This morning the Republican National Committee blasted out a story from The Hill about a new nonpartisan study finding that the poor will be hit hardest if all the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire. An RNC spokesman, taking a shot at the Dems’ failure to extend the tax cuts, rhetorically asked: “What excuse will the Democrats use now?”

Here’s the funny thing, though. While that study does indeed find that letting all the tax cuts expire does disproportionately hurt the poor, it also finds that the plan Dems have actually proposed on the Bush tax cuts is better for the poor than the Republican one.

This comes to us via Oliver Willis, who thinks the story illustrates the kind of “geniuses” who are working at the RNC these days, and attributes the whole thing to the influence of Michael Steele.