In place of Missed one in Blog 3... about Bush-era tax cuts control debate

I read an article today about Bush-era tax cuts.  It was a debate between the Republicans and the Democrats about whether there should be tax cuts on the rich.  The tax cut was passed by George Bush when he was President.  The question was "whether to maintain the reduced tax rates for the wealthy Americans".  The Democrats  supported the idea of entitlement to all and supported high taxes on the rich.  The Republicans supported the idea that the rich should have a tax cut.  Their view behind this is, since its the wealthy (and wealthy corporations) that have the money and help keep our economy going, we should try to stimulate the economy by giving them a break by reducing their taxes.  Republicans want the  tax cuts on the rich to be on a  permanent basis.  They also argued that "spending, not revenue, is the root of the government's deficit problem."
On this issue, I stand mostly with the Republicans.  I agree with the democrats in that having higher taxes on the rich makes a difference with helping reduce our dept.  The article said that the upper income households "account for about $700 billion of the total $4 trillion impact that the Bush tax law would have if it were extended for the next 10 years".  I agree that it is good to tax the rich, but at the same time I think they could use a little slack because we shouldn't rely only on them for getting us out of debt, we should spend less and have a balanced budget.  It's not that I'm in favor of the rich but I think a much bigger problem is the way we, as a country and individually, spend on things that aren't necessary.  In America we are given so much that we feel we need it all, and this way of living is bad.  I think living more simply would make just as much of a difference as getting money to pay off our debt from taxes on the rich.  So instead of just focusing on taxes, I believe we should couple it with creating a budget cut.