For those of us used to thinking of the Senate as a home for spineless RINOs, or at least enough such creatures to usually prevent good free-market legislation from passing or allow bad anti-market legislation to pass, Monday provided a breath of fresh air.

Perhaps infused with some backbone by the support of a few brave Democrats who understand the damage that any tax hike would do to an incipient recovery, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced legislation “that ensures that no one in this country will pay higher income taxes next year than they are right now."  McConnell also added dryly that “only in Washington could someone propose a tax hike as an antidote to a recession.”

McConnell’s move was all the more impressive given the boneheaded statement by House Minority Leader John Boehner on Sunday’s edition of “Face The State” in which he said that he’d vote for extension of the tax cuts which excuded the highest bracket.  The fact that he said he’d do so if that were his only option is all but irrelevant.  Boehner blinked.

According to CBS News, it’s a resurgently pro-growth Senate which is holding line: “a spokesperson for McConnell said today that every Senate Republican has pledged to oppose any attempt to extend the Bush tax cuts that doesn’t include an extension of the tax cuts for the wealthy.”

The Democrats probably welcome this battle, stuck as they are in their class warfare echo chamber. Nor surprisingly, Harry Reid said that extending the tax cuts for the highest bracket would represent “giveaways for millionaires and CEOs who ship American jobs overseas.”

Of course, Harry Reid is, in terms of economics, as dumb as a box of rocks.  He has his formulation exactly backwards; a tax hike on the many small businesses to which the personal tax rate applies will cause those businesses not to start or not to expand.  A tax hike will be the exact cause of jobs going overseas.

As for “giveaways for millionaires", Reid’s statement betrays the usual Progressive mindset that a rich person’s money belongs to the government first and to the person who earned it only to the extent that government wants to let them keep some.

Reid is suggesting that government accomplish through tax law what any regular person would go to jail for doing: mugging Americans and taking the contents of their wallets.

It’s also worth noting that Reid’s rhetoric about the middle class “deserving to have their taxes cut” ignores the fact that the top 1% of earners pay over 40% of all income taxes.  Defining the middle class as those in a range of about $33,000 in adjusted gross income (the median American taxpayer in 2007) to $113,000 (above which one would be in the top 10% of earners), all of those people combined paid only a quarter of the government’s income tax revenue.  Arguing  that people who pay very little tax “deserve” a tax cut more than those who actually pay taxes deserve it is an argument that only Robin Hood could love.

But that’s what Democrats are: thieves in do-gooders’ clothing.

My thanks and appreciation to the unified Republican caucus in the Senate and the few Democrats standing with them against the tide of economic idiocy and self-destruction.  It remains to be seen whether any of the usual suspects cave in, but at this point perhaps even Olympia Snowe recognizes that good economics is good politics in this election season.