So can someone explain the big difference between tax credits and tax cuts?

[Magus]

Having a difficult time with this one. See, Obama's new jobs bill contains mostly tax credits, which John Boehner (the Speaker of the House, and of the opposite political party, for those of you foreign to our wacky political hijinks) has a problem with. He feels we should instead have mostly tax cuts (well, I said "mostly" to give him some credit, since I think he has said pretty much 100% tax cuts as far as I can tell).

However, I have a difficult time telling the difference between the two. As far as I can tell, a tax credit is basically the same thing as a cut except you get the cut via a monetary reimbursement for doing something the government wants you to do (such as hire people). A tax cut is just where you never pay the taxes in the first place, also possibly with stipulations (except presumably Boehner is against such stipulations as "hiring Americans" or what have you). They seem to amount to the same thing so if there's another difference I'd like someone into economics to explain it to me, if anyone here is an economist or sociologist or even just a major in one of those things.

It would just seem silly if a politician were to basically support pretty much the same thing as another politician but use slightly different terminology in order to make it appear as if they are actually at loggerheads in order to score political points.