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Mo. Senators Bond, McCaskill on voting Obama tax package

U.S. Senators for Missouri Kit Bond, at left, and Claire McCaskill.
St. Louis Public Radio
U.S. Senators for Missouri Kit Bond, at left, and Claire McCaskill.

Often tax legislation is a little bit muddled. We try to break down Obama's latest for you and let you know what your U.S. Senators, Kit Bond and Claire McCaskill, think as they go to vote on the bill.

Here's what the bill does:

  • Extends expiring tax cuts to high earners and imposes a lower estate tax on wealthy heirs.
  • It also extends jobless benefits and cuts social security payroll taxes for workers by nearly a third for the coming year.

And what do your senators have to say about their impending votes?
McCaskill has mixed feelings:

"So, I'm gonna continue to drill down and look at it very carefully, make sure that what we are doing is very stimulative. Frankly, that extra bonus for the multimillionaires, that's not very stimulative. If it were stimulative we would have had a lot of jobs created the last decade and we haven't."

Kit Bond disagrees:

"And I expect if this bill goes through it is going to generate the jobs. And I think it is simple economics 101 and I am disappointed that some people don't understand that. No jobs are created by raising taxes."

The White House also compiled an explanatory guide for the bill.