Obama pushing extension of middle-class tax cuts

JULIE PACE

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — Pres­i­dent Barack Obama, eager to shift election-year atten­tion away from the nation’s lack­lus­ter jobs mar­ket, called on Con­gress Mon­day to extend tax cuts for only low and mid­dle income earn­ers while allow­ing taxes to increase for fam­i­lies that make more than $250,000 a year.

“Let’s not hold the vast major­ity of Amer­i­cans and our econ­omy hostage while we debate the mer­its of another tax cut for the wealthy,” said Obama, flanked by a dozen peo­ple the White House said would ben­e­fit from the mid­dle class-oriented tax cut extension.

Obama wants Con­gress to pass a one-year exten­sion of the Bush-era tax cuts for house­holds mak­ing less than $250,000 before they expire at the end of the year. He said the out­come of his Novem­ber elec­tion con­test with Repub­li­can rival Mitt Rom­ney would then deter­mine the fate of the tax cuts for higher income earners.

“My oppo­nent will fight to keep them in place. I will fight to end them,” he said.

White House spokesman Jay Car­ney said Obama “would not sign” a bill that extended the whole range of tax cuts in full.

Obama has long sup­ported expi­ra­tion of the tax cuts for those mak­ing more than $250,000. But the White House and the president’s re-election team are reviv­ing his argu­ments now as a way to paint con­gres­sional Repub­li­cans as obstruc­tion­ists and Rom­ney as a pro­tec­tor of the wealthy, sug­gest­ing the GOP push for an across-the-board exten­sion of the tax cuts puts the mid­dle class at risk.

The president’s announce­ment also fol­lows Friday’s dis­mal jobs report, which showed the nation’s unem­ploy­ment rate stub­bornly stuck at 8.2 percent.

Rom­ney sup­ports extend­ing the tax cuts for all income earn­ers. His cam­paign spokes­woman Andrea Saul said Mon­day that Obama’s pro­posal amounted to a “mas­sive tax increase” and proved that the pres­i­dent “doesn’t have a clue how to get Amer­ica work­ing again and help the mid­dle class.”

The con­tours of the tax debate are largely the same as they were when the cuts were due to expire at the end of 2010. While Obama opposed an exten­sion for higher income earn­ers then as well, he ulti­mately agreed to full two-year exten­sion, in part to win con­ces­sions for other legislation.

Democ­rats see the tax debate as part of a larger coor­di­nated attack on Rom­ney, which includes inten­si­fy­ing calls for him to explain off­shore bank accounts and release sev­eral years of tax returns.

The strat­egy is aimed at por­tray­ing Rom­ney, whose per­sonal wealth could exceed $250 mil­lion, as dis­con­nected from middle-class voters.

Rom­ney aides say the Demo­c­ra­tic attacks on the pre­sump­tive GOP nominee’s wealth an “unfounded char­ac­ter assault.”

Rom­ney hasn’t shirked from his wealth in the face of renewed Demo­c­ra­tic crit­i­cism. He held a $50,000 per per­son fundrais­ers Sun­day in the Hamp­tons, New York’s exclu­sive string of water­front com­mu­ni­ties on Long Island’s South Shore.

Rom­ney aides also announced that the cam­paign and the Repub­li­can National Com­mit­tee raised a com­bined $106 mil­lion in June, the for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts governor’s biggest monthly haul so far. The Obama cam­paign and the Demo­c­ra­tic National Com­mit­tee raised $71 mil­lion last month.

Repub­li­can law­mak­ers imme­di­ately balked at Obama’s call for a par­tial extension.

“No one should see an income tax hike next year — not fam­i­lies, not small busi­nesses and other job cre­ators,” said Sen­ate Minor­ity Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

The president’s pitch may also face some oppo­si­tion from con­gres­sional Democ­rats. House Minor­ity Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., a mem­ber of his party’s Sen­ate lead­er­ship, have both advo­cated deny­ing the tax cut exten­sion to those mak­ing above $1 mil­lion annually.

Extend­ing the tax cuts only for house­holds mak­ing below $250,000 costs the gov­ern­ment about $800 bil­lion less over 10 years than extend­ing them for every­one. The full cuts cost the gov­ern­ment about $4.5 tril­lion over a decade.

Obama was to con­tinue the tax debate Tues­day dur­ing a cam­paign trip to Iowa. His re-election team was also pro­mot­ing the president’s tax pol­icy at a series of events this week in bat­tle­ground states, includ­ing New Hamp­shire, Col­orado and Nevada.

The Bush-era tax cuts are due to expire at the end of the year unless Con­gress votes to extend them. Econ­o­mists worry that across-the-board tax increases, along with auto­matic spend­ing cuts also sched­uled to take hold at year’s end, could be a blow to the shaky U.S. economy.

Posted by AP News on Jul 9 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.