OBAMA VISITS RED STATE
Prodding the new Republican Congress from a conservative state, President Barack Obama on Wednesday urged GOP lawmakers to work with him on an agenda that helps the middle class and insisted they offer better alternatives if they disagree with his. In his first visit top Idaho as president, he acknowledged that the proposals in his State of the Union address Tuesday to increase taxes on the rich to pay for free community college and middle-class tax breaks face Republican opposition. “They should put forward some alternative proposals,” he said. “I want to hear specifically from them how they intend to help kids pay for college. It is perfectly fair for them to say we have a better way to meet these national priorities. But if they do they have to show what those ideas are.” From Idaho, Obama heads to Kansas, another state that typically backs Republicans.
— Associated Press
Instead, Lew said, lawmakers should focus on simplifying taxes paid by businesses, an approach that is gaining traction on Capitol Hill.
“I don’t think that there’s any advantage in pretending that there aren’t big disagreements on the individual tax side,” Lew said at a forum hosted by the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. “We had a national debate just two years ago about the top rate. We’re not looking at the kind of negotiation to go back to lower the top rate.”
“While our views on individual tax reform may be far apart,” Lew added, “there is a broad set of business tax reforms on which we should be able to agree.”
Lew’s comments came a day after President Barack Obama proposed raising taxes on the rich and using some of the revenue to finance tax breaks for the middle class. In his State of the Union address, Obama called his approach “middle-class economics.”
Congressional Republicans panned the speech, saying there is no way they would use their majorities in the House and Senate to enact tax increases.
“All the president really offered (Tuesday) night was more taxes, more government, more of the same approach that has failed the middle class for decades,” said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. “These just aren’t the wrong policies, they’re the wrong priorities.”
On Wednesday, congressional Republicans said they were disappointed the Obama administration isn’t pushing to simplify taxes for individuals. They noted that the vast majority of small business owners report business income on their individual tax returns.
Still, key Republicans said they would welcome more talks about business taxes.
“We’re going to keep talking. We’re going to exhaust the possibilities of seeing where the common ground exists and see if we can get something done,” said Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.
“We do have big differences of opinion and our next step is to explore the areas of common ground if and where they exist,” Ryan said. “I’d like comprehensive tax reform and I think it’s important that you make sure that small businesses don’t fall by the wayside. And that is very important to us, and so we’ll see if we can complete the circle.”
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