House Minority Leader John Boehner said he would vote for US President Barack Obama’s plan to extend tax cuts only for middle-class earners, not the wealthy, if that were the only option available to House Republicans.
Boehner said it was “bad policy” to exclude the highest-earning Americans from tax relief during the recession, but he said he wouldn’t block the breaks for middle-income individuals and families if Democrats wouldn’t support the full package.
Income tax cuts passed under former US president George W. Bush will expire at the end of this year unless Congress acts and Obama signs the bill. Obama said he would support continuing the lower tax rates for couples earning up to US$250,000 or single taxpayers making up to US$200,000, but he and the Democratic leadership in Congress refuse to back continued lower rates for the fewer than 3 percent of Americans who make more than that.
The cost of extending the tax cuts for everyone for the next 10 years would approach US$4 trillion, according to congressional estimates. Eliminating the breaks for the top earners would reduce that bill by about US$700 billion.
Boehner’s comments signaled a possible break in the logjam that has prevented passage of a tax bill, although Republicans would still force Democrats to vote on their bigger tax-cut package in the final weeks before the November congressional elections.
“I want to do something for all Americans who pay taxes,” Boehner said in an interview taped on Saturday for Face the Nation on CBS. “If the only option I have is to vote for some of those tax reductions, I’ll vote for it ... If that’s what we can get done, but I think that’s bad policy. I don’t think that’s going to help our economy.”
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs issued a statement on Sunday saying: “We welcome John Boehner’s change in position and support for the middle-class tax cuts, but time will tell if his actions will be anything but continued support for the failed policies that got us into this mess.”
Austan Goolsbee, new chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said on ABC’s This Week that he hopes Democratic lawmakers who also want an across-the-board extension will join Obama and others in the party in supporting legislation aimed at the middle class before the November elections.
In response to Boehner’s comments, Goolsbee said: “If he’s for that, I would be happy.”
With congressional elections less than two months away, both parties have been working to score points with voters generally unhappy with Congress. Democrats are bearing the brunt of voter anger over a stubborn recession, a weak job market and a high-spending government, giving the Republicans an opening for taking back control of the House and possibly the Senate.
Democratic leaders would relish putting up a bill that extends only the middle-class tax cuts and then daring Republicans to oppose it. In response, Republican lawmakers probably would try to force votes on amendments to extend all the tax cuts, arguing that it would be a boost to the economy and then point to those who rejected them.
A compromise over the tax-cut extensions had been suggested by some senior Democrats. In a speech last week in Cleveland, Obama rejected the idea of temporarily extending all the tax cuts for one to two years.
If Republicans regain control of the House, they would remove Democrat Nancy Pelosi of California as speaker, a position that is second in line to the presidency after the vice president. Boehner would be the most likely successor and he is already the focus of criticism from the Democrats’ re-election campaign.
Obama has been leading the charge against Boehner, last week accusing him of offering little but the stale ideas that led to the economic meltdown.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS