Bush Tax Cuts or Obama Stimulus: Which Will Help the U.S. Economy?

Yet on the other side of the corporate divide, U.S. bellwethers including GE(GE), American Express(AXP) and Bank of America(BAC) were part of a corporate group that penned a letter to Capitol Hill during the summer voicing support for the tax incentives, as noted in a report on Thursday in The Washington Post.

Without question, the Democrats have seen faith from the U.S. public in the party's economic policy wane.

In a new Washington Post-ABC poll, 43% of voters said they prefer Republicans on financial issues, compared with 39% for Democrats. That's the first time that the Republicans have come out ahead on that poll question since 2002. But we're more interested in which policy idea TheStreet readership thinks is more important to keeping the U.S. economy from slipping into a protracted recession.

Yet President Obama is not relenting in the face of the wavering public support and the constant attacks from Republicans. It was noted all over the press that President Obama chose to deliver his national speech on the economy in Cleveland, where last month the Republican House leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) had called for the firing of Obama's economic team.

On Friday, President Obama gave another sign that it's in one ear and out the other with the Republican attacks on his economic advisors, announcing he would hire University of Chicago professor Austin Goolsbee to succeed Christina Romer as head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

Goolsbee has been a long-time Obama right hand man on economic issues. In the context of the current debate, and given the President's firmness in the face of public controversy over his economic ideas, what's most notable about Goolsbee is his backing of the policy goal of increasing taxes for those earning more than $250,000 a year.

Indeed, do you think that extending the Bush tax cuts for those making over $250,000, or President Obama's $180 billion stimulus package, is the right move for the struggling U.S. economy? Take our poll below, to learn the consensus of TheStreet.

Which do you think is the right stimulus for the U.S. economy: extending the Bush tax cuts for those making over $250,000, or President Obama's $180 billion stimulus package?
	Extending the Bush-era tax cuts. Obama's infrastructure and tax-incentives stimulus plan.

--Written by Eric Rosenbaum in New York.

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