OPINION: Continuing all tax rates will help Long Islanders

Christian Browne is an attorney who lives in Rockville Centre.

In this past election, Reps. Carolyn McCarthy (D-Mineola) and Steve Israel (D-Huntington) touted a proposal to index future tax increases to the regional cost of living. Under the plan, the upper income tax brackets in our area would be set at higher dollar amounts than those in regions of the country where it is less costly to live.

Indexing isn't on the table now, but McCarthy and Israel have a chance to give practical effect to that proposal in the lame-duck session of Congress now considering an extension of the expiring Bush tax cuts. To protect less-than-wealthy Long Islanders from a large tax increase, all our representatives should vote to extend the current rates for all Americans.

Such a vote would seem to place them at odds with President Barack Obama, who has long insisted on increasing taxes on individuals making $200,000 or more per year and couples making more than $250,000 (though there are signs that he may be modifying his position now). He has referred to these earners as "rich" - and targets their wallets accordingly.

Yet few would argue that a Long Island family or small business with a gross income of $250,000 is rich. Here, such earners often come from families with two working spouses, laboring under a heavy state income tax and paying among the highest property and sales taxes in the country. They may not be "struggling," but they are far from the kind of fat cats President Obama hopes to tax.

Additionally, Long Island's economic health is heavily dependent on the success of small businesses. Long Island still has actual downtowns populated by small restaurants, bars, barbers, dry cleaners and professional offices, whose business revenue is often taxed as personal income. These businesses would also be hit with the president's big tax hike, further adding to the tremendous tax and labor costs that already hamper their growth.

While the indexing proposal is supposed to help compensate for these economic realities, the political reality is that Congress will never pass it, as too many low-cost states' representatives will oppose it. But extending the current tax rates for all would have the same effect. It would shield many non-wealthy Long Island families and businesses from being unfairly classified as rich and marked for a large tax increase.

There is little question that a steep rate hike would slow the already shaky local recovery. Even the president concedes that a tax increase in a time of economic distress is foolish - while simultaneously arguing the need to raise rates on the "rich." Here the president contradicts himself; it cannot be at once wise and foolish to raise taxes in a poor economy.

Nor are the proposed increases the path to deficit reduction. The president claims that the country would have to borrow $700 billion if we fail to raise rates. But by this logic, even if we raised rates on top earners by 5 points, we would still be borrowing billions because we failed to hike rates even more.

The fact is, our borrowing is a result of excessive spending that has exploded wildly in the past two years. The president and his allies supported spending more than a trillion on fiscal stimulus, housing and auto bailouts, and they funneled billions more to teachers and other government unions. This same crowd now wants voters to accept the nonsensical premise that it is fiscally reckless merely to keep all tax rates at the same levels that have prevailed for the better part of a decade.

Long Islanders are already overtaxed, send more money to Washington than we receive back, and suffer with a sky-high cost of living. If our representatives truly believe in indexing to protect Long Island's middle-class and small business taxpayers, they'll vote to extend the current tax rates in perpetuity.