Can they really be serious?

Somehow, in the midst of a recession in which national unemployment is close to 10 percent and the country is facing a record $1.47 trillion deficit, Republicans in Congress appear ready to do battle to preserve tax breaks for the wealthy that are due to expire in January.

Remember those Bush-era tax cuts? They, along with the ill-advised Iraq war, were primarily responsible for taking a healthy surplus left by the Clinton administration and converting it into the massive deficits that we have endured for years.

Somehow, the prospect of adding at least another $2 trillion to the national debt over the next decade doesn't faze the vast majority of Republicans (and handful of Democrats) in Congress for whom any tax cut is a good tax cut, however fiscally reckless or unneeded by the recipient. Apparently, we are supposed to forget that just weeks ago, the GOP leadership was railing against extending benefits to long-term unemployed Americans on the grounds that helping those people, many of whom are in truly desperate straits, would add about $34 billion to the deficit.

President Barack Obama deserves credit for using his Saturday radio address to criticize House Minority Leader John Boehner for promising to fight to permanently extend the Bush tax cuts even for families earning more than $250,000 a year. With so many pressing needs in our society, it is not clear that tax breaks for the most well-off Americans are ever a good idea; but the timing of this proposal, with deficits rising and so many Americans in need, could hardly be worse. It says a lot about the current climate in Washington that taking such a common-sense stand demonstrates a certain degree of political bravery on Mr. Obama's part.

The question of middle-class taxes is different and is a debate worth having. The president and many Democrats are inclined to extend the tax cuts on families making less than $250,000. During his campaign for president, Mr. Obama repeatedly promised never to raise taxes on the middle class (a promise we considered ill-advised, then and now), so he would no doubt take a political hit for letting the tax break for middle-class families expire. We, however, are far more concerned with the fiscal health of the nation than the president's political fortunes.

These tax cuts were designed to be temporary because virtually everybody realized that — "trickle down" theory notwithstanding — over time, they would cause annual deficits and the overall federal debt to spiral out of control. The middle-class tax cut, were it to continue, would represent almost two-thirds of the $2 trillion impact on the national debt by 2020.

We have great sympathy for the recession-battered middle class in this country and have no disagreement, in principle, on lowering their taxes. But the effect on the national Treasury of continuing this tax cut, at this time, may be more than this debt-weary nation can afford.