Jon Kyl (7/11/2010):

“You should never raise taxes in order to cut taxes. Surely congress has the authority and it would be right, if we decide we want to cut taxes to spur the economy, not to have to raise taxes in order to offset those costs. You do need to offset the cost of increased spending. And that’s what republicans object to. But you should never have to offset cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans.“

Jon Kyl (11/27/2011):

In an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” the Arizona Republican argued that continuing a cut in the employee share of the payroll tax would undermine the Social Security system.

[...]

“The problem here is payroll doesn’t go into general revenue, it supports Social Security, and you can’t keep extending the payroll tax holiday and have a secure Social Security,” he said.

This really gets at the heart of present day GOP obstructionism. They will tout some idiotic ideological truism such as “you should never have to offset the cost” of lowering taxes, but then just as fast, they will argue the complete opposite when their own interests have nothing to gain. In the first case, it was the Bush Tax Cuts that disproportionately benefited the wealthy. In the second case, it’s the extension of Obama’s Payroll Tax Cut for the working class.

Besides this hypocritical rhetoric, it should also be noted (1) that the idea that tax cuts don’t have to be offset is straight up bullshit – in fact, almost 2.5 trillion dollars of our national debt was incurred by failing to offset the Bush Tax Cuts; and (2) the second Kyl statement is factually incorrect, since the the payroll tax cut extension is funded by a surtax on people who make more than 1 million dollars per year.

Update: A previous version of this post stated the Bush tax cuts cost 1.5 trillion dollars.