Romney sidesteps tax dispute; Gingrich dives in

Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov. Mitt Rom­ney reads from a tele-prompter as he makes a cam­paign speech in Bed­ford, N.H. Tues­day, Dec. 20, 2011. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

KASIE HUNT, THOMAS BEAUMONT

Asso­ci­ated Press

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Mitt Rom­ney refused to be pinned down Wednes­day on how Con­gress should break an impasse that threat­ens to raise taxes for 160 mil­lion work­ers — the lat­est press­ing pol­icy debate the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial hope­ful has side­stepped. Rival Newt Gin­grich, in con­trast, cas­ti­gated Con­gress for “an absurd dere­lic­tion of duty.”

With less than two weeks before the Iowa cau­cuses, the two rivals exchanged ever sharper words over a bar­rage of neg­a­tive ads com­ing from Romney’s allies as they took a diver­gent approach on the pay­roll tax dis­pute dead­lock­ing Washington.

“I’m not going to get into the back-and-forth on the con­gres­sional sausage-making process,” Rom­ney, the for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor, said in Keene, N.H., as the day began. “I hope they’re able to sit down and work out a solu­tion that works for the Amer­i­can peo­ple. My hope is that the solu­tion includes exten­sion of the pay­roll tax holiday.”

But Rom­ney left open the terms for an exten­sion, which is the crux of the stalled debate in Wash­ing­ton. He sug­gested the exten­sion should last more than two months and ide­ally a year, but called such details “deep in the weeds.”

House Repub­li­cans rejected a bipar­ti­san com­pro­mise in the Sen­ate that would have kept the tax cuts going for two months, instead call­ing for talks seek­ing a one-year exten­sion. The cuts expire Jan. 1 unless Con­gress acts, and there is lit­tle chance of achiev­ing that in time to head off a hit in people’s paychecks.

In Iowa, Gin­grich called a two-month exten­sion “insuf­fi­cient” and scolded the Democratic-controlled Sen­ate, Major­ity Leader Harry Reid and Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s admin­is­tra­tion for “lurch­ing from fail­ure to fail­ure” and mar­veled: “They can’t fig­ure out how to pass a one-year exten­sion, so the Sen­ate leaves town?”

“It’s game-playing,” added the for­mer House speaker, who stopped short of crit­i­ciz­ing House Repub­li­cans and their leader Ohio Rep. John Boehner. Gin­grich also did not crit­i­cize Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Repub­li­can Sen­ate leader from Ken­tucky who signed off on the short-term extension.

The dif­fer­ent pos­tures over the pay­roll tax exten­sion played out against a back­drop of inten­si­fy­ing ran­cor — and a dis­pute over neg­a­tive adver­tis­ing — between Rom­ney and Gin­grich with the Jan. 3 Iowa cau­cuses draw­ing close.

Rom­ney argued that Gin­grich wasn’t strong enough to with­stand the crit­i­cism com­ing his way, espe­cially from $2.8 mil­lion in ads by the pro-Romney group Restore Our Future. The group is going after Gin­grich relent­lessly in Iowa and exact­ing a price in the for­mer speaker’s stand­ing in polls.

“I’m sure I could go out and say, ‘Please, don’t do any­thing neg­a­tive,’” Rom­ney said on Fox News. “But this is pol­i­tics. And if you can’t stand the heat in this lit­tle kitchen, wait until Obama’s Hell’s Kitchen turns up the heat.”

Gin­grich shot back from Man­ches­ter, N.H.: “If he wants to test the heat, I’ll meet him any­where in Iowa next week.” He went on: “If he wants to try out the kitchen, I’ll be glad to debate him any­where. We’ll bring his ads and he can defend them.”

Gin­grich tried to show he was aim­ing for a higher road. He started col­lect­ing peti­tion sig­na­tures from like-minded peo­ple who don’t want to see the Repub­li­can can­di­dates rip­ping into each other.

“Attack­ing fel­low Repub­li­cans only helps one per­son: Barack Obama,” the peti­tion states.

Gin­grich has com­plained that the Restore Our Future ads, most paint­ing him as an eth­i­cally chal­lenged Wash­ing­ton power bro­ker, are untrue. But he declined to say dur­ing a news con­fer­ence in Des Moines on Wednes­day what specif­i­cally is inac­cu­rate about the ads, instead cit­ing inde­pen­dent reviews that have ques­tioned their validity.

“It would be nice if Gov­er­nor Rom­ney was either hon­est about his for­mer staff and his sup­port­ers run­ning neg­a­tive ads, and either dis­own them — ask that they take them off the air — or admit this is his cam­paign,” Gin­grich said.

For his part, Rom­ney largely took a pass on the pay­roll tax mat­ter despite cast­ing him­self as an out­sider with the busi­ness exper­tise nec­es­sary to fix Wash­ing­ton and the econ­omy. He has spent much of the year declin­ing to weigh in on the hot-button fis­cal issues Con­gress has wres­tled over.

He stayed out of the sum­mer­time fight over rais­ing the fed­eral debt ceil­ing, urg­ing coop­er­a­tion but stop­ping short of endors­ing the House GOP’s one-year exten­sion or the Senate’s two-month exten­sion. He even­tu­ally opposed the deal.

In the spring, he was ini­tially reluc­tant to embrace Wis­con­sin Rep. Paul Ryan’s bud­get pro­posal, which would have essen­tially trans­formed Medicare into a voucher sys­tem. Since then, he’s endorsed parts of it.

And on Wednes­day, Rom­ney told NBC’s Chuck Todd that if he becomes the nom­i­nee, he will not release his tax returns to the public.

Gin­grich, con­versely, hasn’t shied away from inject­ing him­self into the lat­est debates on Capi­tol Hill, eager to show that he has the lead­er­ship qual­i­fi­ca­tions nec­es­sary to run Wash­ing­ton and the coun­try — even when it was polit­i­cally perilous.

He sup­ported rais­ing the debt ceil­ing, anath­ema to many con­ser­v­a­tives, and cas­ti­gated the Medicare por­tion of the Ryan plan, pop­u­lar with the GOP’s right flank, as “right-wing social engi­neer­ing,” a phrase he later apol­o­gized for using. On the lat­est issue, Gin­grich favors a one-year exten­sion of the pay­roll tax cut.

He has argued that he’s a proven national leader for hav­ing bat­tled Demo­c­ra­tic Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton in the 1990s. He usu­ally doesn’t men­tion that as House speaker back then, he bore much of the blame for the fed­eral gov­ern­ment twice shut­ting down when he could not agree on a bud­get with the Clin­ton White House.

On Wednes­day, in Iowa, he tried to use the lat­est stale­mate to his advan­tage, say­ing: “This is an exam­ple of why peo­ple are sick of Wash­ing­ton and sick of politics.”

Mean­while, in east­ern Iowa, Min­nesota Rep. Michele Bach­mann, vying for the con­ser­v­a­tive crown in Iowa, blasted the exten­sion as “a very bad propo­si­tion” that’s too costly.

Gin­grich is try­ing to end his slide in Iowa, where the attacks have taken hold in the past two weeks, with a show of force from estab­lish­ment Repub­li­can lead­ers in early vot­ing states endors­ing his can­di­dacy. He also was dis­patch­ing for­mer Okla­homa Rep. J.C. Watts to Iowa to meet pri­vately with GOP lead­ers and the media in an attempt to sta­bi­lize the campaign.

The spat between Rom­ney and Gin­grich over third-party ads has dom­i­nated the GOP cam­paign in recent days and high­lighted the role of super PACs, inde­pen­dent groups that may accept unlim­ited dona­tions but are not sup­posed to directly coor­di­nate with candidates.

Such groups have sprung up to sup­port every seri­ous Repub­li­can can­di­date fol­low­ing a Supreme Court deci­sion last year that said indi­vid­u­als, unions and cor­po­ra­tions can donate unlim­ited sums of money to out­fits advo­cat­ing the elec­tion or defeat of candidates.

Two pro-Gingrich groups have started rais­ing money and Gingrich’s long­time aide Rick Tyler just signed on with one of them. But Romney’s sup­port­ers have had a head start in rais­ing money and are slated to spend $3 mil­lion this month in Iowa alone, most on anti-Gingrich ads.

Gin­grich, who trails Rom­ney badly in fundrais­ing, said he would dis­avow any group that runs neg­a­tive ads on his behalf.

Sig­nal­ing a pos­si­ble soft­en­ing of ads just before the hol­i­day, Gin­grich this week began show­ing a Christ­mas greet­ing com­mer­cial while Texas Gov. Rick Perry launched one fea­tur­ing his wife, Anita.

But the spirit hadn’t hit with a group sup­port­ing Perry, which launched an ad crit­i­ciz­ing Rom­ney for his past sup­port of abor­tion rights and Gin­grich for ethics vio­la­tions while in Congress.

In a sign of his fundrais­ing and orga­ni­za­tional defi­cien­cies, Gin­grich was rush­ing home to Vir­ginia later Wednes­day to help ensure he has the needed sig­na­tures to get on the bal­lot there.

Posted by AP News on Dec 21 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.