New Hampshire’s Republican senate nominee, Kelly Ayotte, has consistently called for extending the Bush tax cuts for the richest two percent of Americans, which would entail borrowing and spending $830 billion in order to give millionaires a $100,000 tax break. She also wants to cut the corporate tax rate, giving large corporations who already have a tax code that they easily manipulate to their advantage yet another break.

But how about giving middle-class workers a break by guaranteeing paid sick leave? During a “lightning round” of questions at the latest New Hampshire senate debate, Ayotte was asked “would you support legislation guaranteeing paid sick leave to employees?” Ayotte said that deciding whether or not to provide paid leave is “certainly” something best left to employers:

I think that that is certainly an issue that should be addressed by employers rather than mandated by the government.

Watch it:

Ayotte’s opponent, Rep. Paul Hodes (D-NH), was even quicker with an answer. “Yes,” he said.

The problem with Ayotte’s response is that employers have shown this is an issue they have no interest in addressing. Nearly 50 percent of private sector workers (including 86 percent of food service workers and 78 percent of hotel workers) do not have guaranteed paid sick leave. This amounts to some 57 million workers. The United States is the only nation in the industrialized world that does not mandate guaranteed paid sick leave.

The choice not to guarantee paid sick leave entails real health risks, particularly since so many food service workers are forced to come to work ill or forego their paycheck. Lost productivity due to sick workers attending work and infecting other employees costs the U.S. economy $180 billion annually. During the swine flu outbreak late last year, public health experts expressed a concern that failure to provide sick leave was contributing to the spread of the disease.

The typical conservative response is that mandating paid sick leave will mean creating crippling new costs for businesses. But the Drum Major Institute released a study this week that examined San Francisco’s city-wide implementation of a paid sick leave law and found “no evidence that businesses in San Francisco have been negatively impacted by the enactment of paid sick leave.”

The model that Ayotte is clinging to — in which employers always do the right thing for their employees and dissatisfied workers can always leave their job to find a better deal elsewhere — sounds nice in theory. But what does that world look like in practice?

Nearly all of the discussion regarding the scheduled expiration of the Bush tax cuts at the end of the year has focused on the effect the expiration would have on marginal income tax rates. But there were other facets of the Bush tax cut package, including cutting the capital gains and stock dividends rates to 15 percent.

President Obama has proposed increasing the rates on capital gains and stock dividends back to 20 percent for those making $250,000 or more. Republicans, meanwhile, have opposed allowing the increase to occur. And now they’ve been joined by 47 House Democrats:

Forty-seven House Democrats have signed a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi urging that tax rates on capital gains and dividends be maintained at the current level of up to 15% for all earners…The letter from House Democrats argues that raising taxes on dividends and capital gains would be harmful to companies’ ability to grow and add jobs.

The rationale for having a lower capital gains and dividend rate is that it will encourage investment, as investors will want to take advantage of a lower rate. Under President Clinton, the capital gains rate was 20 percent, while dividends were treated as regular income, so Obama is proposing a tax policy even more deferential to these sorts of income than was in place in the 1990′s. Plus, as Citizens for Tax Justice pointed out, these House Democrats are to the right of President Reagan when it comes to investor income:

In 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Tax Reform Act that ended the tax preference for capital gains and taxed all types of income at the same rates. Conservatives have long complained about this Reagan tax reform, and have even incorrectly claimed that capital gains tax revenue actually fell as a result of it…Today, conservative critics of President Reagan have been joined by a group of House Democrats who also seem to feel that Reagan was not sufficiently devoted to tax preferences for the wealthy investor class.

Of course, Obama hasn’t proposed evening the rates between regular income and investment income either, but to think that wealthy investors need a capital gains rate 20 points below the top marginal income tax rate (currently 35 percent) in order to invest their money is silly. Do conservatives, and these House Democrats, really believe that the wealthy will squirrel away their money under the mattress if the capital gains rate goes back to the level at which it was under Clinton? In fact, business investment was stronger under President Clinton that it was under President Bush.

The overwhelming majority of capital gains go to the richest households. Keeping that rate so far below the rates applied to normal income is simply a giveaway to the wealthy that doesn’t boost the economy.

A few Senate Democrats — including Sens. Ben Nelson (D-NE), Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Evan Bayh (D-IN) — have come out against President Obama’s plan to extend the Bush tax cuts for the middle-class while allowing them to expire for the richest two percent of Americans (saving $830 billion in borrowing and spending). In fact, Nelson feels so strongly about extending the Bush tax cuts that he delivered a speech today at the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think-tank, arguing for “why we should not raise taxes in a weak economy.”

“I hate deficit spending, but some matters are so urgent that they can’t wait. Such was the case with the stimulus package, which contained more than $300 billion in tax relief, and I believe the same holds true about the expiring Bush era tax cuts,” Nelson has said. Heritage promoted the event by noting Nelson’s support for Bush’s tax cuts in the first place:

Since coming to the Senate in 2001, Nelson has played a key role in passing several major tax cuts, including providing the lynchpin of Democratic support for both the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush. In September, Nelson announced that he would again break ranks with his party and support the continuation of the 2001/2003 rates, noting that raising taxes in this economy could impair recovery and “hold back economic development across America.”

To his credit, Nelson did tout the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act as a success during the speech. But if Nelson’s worried about holding back development, he might want to take a look at the Congressional Budget Office’s work on the effects of the Bush tax cuts. CBO has found that extending the Bush tax cuts are the least effective tax or spending step available for boosting the economy and that extending the entire Bush tax cut package permanently will actually decrease incomes and gross national product, due to the increased borrowing needed to pay for them.

Unlike many Republicans, Nelson has said that an extension of the tax cuts should be “paid for as much as possible.” When asked for a potential pay-for, Nelson has responded, “well, you still have unspent stimulus funds,” which means Nelson is willing to pay for extending tax cuts for the rich by raising taxes on the middle class.

Nelson’s message went over well at Heritage, where fealty to Bush tax policies is paramount, but if Nelson truly believes in his policy prescription then he should be willing to face a more skeptical audience. With that in mind, we’d like to extend an invitation to Nelson to come to the Center for American Progress and debate the Bush tax cuts anytime he’d like.