Former White House budget director Peter Orszag's debut New York Times column has drawn a lot of attention because of its reference to the acceptability of temporarily extending the upper-income '01-'03 tax cuts.

In the face of the dueling deficits, the best approach is a compromise: extend the tax cuts for two years and then end them altogether. Ideally only the middle-class tax cuts would be continued for now. Getting a deal in Congress, though, may require keeping the high-income tax cuts, too. And that would still be worth it.

It's pretty clear that Orzsag isn't advocating for extending the '01-'03 tax cuts for the rich per se, but rather painting them as more of a necessary evil than a policy preference. Yet, many news reports say that Orszag is backing extending the tax cuts for the rich to boost the economy.

In an interview with Obama political advisor David Axelrod, NPR's Steve Inskeep sets the prime example.

Some Democrats are saying that maybe they should be extended. And in fact, Peter Orszag, who certainly is trusted by the president - he was the president's budget director until a month ago - is writing now that he thinks that those tax cuts for the wealthy should be extended for a couple of years, because the economy is just that fragile.

An article by in the very paper that Orszag's column was published made perhaps the most misleading claim.

Martin Feldstein, who was economic adviser to President Ronald Reagan, said all the Bush tax cuts should be extended for two years because even letting those for the wealthy lapse would be "a blow to a very fragile economy."

To the chagrin of the White House, Mr. Obama's recently departed budget director, Peter R. Orszag, took the same stance on Tuesday in a column in The New York Times.

The Hill's Jay Heflin:

And resurgent Republicans hopeful their party is on the verge of winning back control of Congress have hammered Obama, warning any tax increase would hinder recovery efforts.

Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi, who has advised both parties on the economy, has said all of the tax cuts should be extended temporarily, and the White House on Tuesday was blindsided by its former budget director, Peter Orszag. He said all of the cuts should be extended for two years, and then all of them should be phased out to reduce the deficit.

Kevin G. Hall, writing for McClatchy, asks the question "Would raising taxes on the rich help or hurt the economy?" and suggests that Orszag believes raising taxes on the rich would be detrimental to the economy.

Obama's own former budget director, Peter Orszag, wrote a widely noted essay this week calling on the president to extend all the tax cuts for two years to provide a more hospitable business climate, and then to let them all expire, because that's essential to reducing the spiraling national debt.

I'm just trying to set the record straight here, because misrepresenting one of the most influential voices in the budget debate and creating a fake controversy about what tax policies will help or hinder economic recovery isn't going to help anyone. Letting tax cuts for the rich expire will have a negligible effect on the economy. And when you consider the cost -- about $75 billion over two years, $800 billion over ten years -- there are any number of more effective job-creating policies than fattening the checking accounts of the richest 2%.

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