Americans voted to re-elect President Obama and keep Republicans in control of the House of Representatives. With a myriad of tax cuts ready to expire and the “fiscal cliff” looming less than eight weeks away, both Obama and House Republicans are vowing cooperation but neither side seems ready to budge on the issue of tax hikes for wealthier Americans.
“We have to remember this is not about competition. This is about conviction,” said Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, which is the caucus of House conservatives. “Someone’s got to convince me that raising taxes on job creators is going to create more jobs. It just doesn’t work that way.”
Jordan lauded House Speaker John Boehner’s statement on Wednesday, in which he called for big solutions on tax reform, spending reductions and entitlement reform but firmly rejected the frequent Obama call for higher taxes on the highest wage earners.
So with less than two months before we fall of the fiscal cliff, which side will blink?
“We will see,” said Jordan. “The Republican Party has had a longstanding position on this key principle that when you actually lower tax rates you get additional revenue which is what we need to deal with the deficit and the debt situation. That’s the right approach. John F. Kennedy understood that and put that into practice. Ronald Reagan understood that and put that into practice. That’s the model to follow, not this idea that we can raise taxes on a few Americans and somehow that’s going to fix the problem. The math doesn’t work.”
Jordan says he hopes for a new tone from Obama, noting that the president campaigned in 2008 as a post-partisan figure and then “became the most partisan president in American history.”
Many critics of Obama called the 2012 elections the last chance to stop our debt from swallowing us and to stop the Obama health plan. Now that he’s been re-elected will those dire predictions be realized?
“Let’s hope this president understands that you cannot keep spending a trillion dollars more each year than what you take in and not have a debt crisis hit this country,” said Jordan. “Let’s hope he figures that out.”
