House Speaker John Boehner has planted his feet: No matter who wins in the November election, the GOP won’t budge on their refusal to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans.
At a Friday press conference, Boehner was asked by a reporter if the GOP was “eventually going to have to raise taxes in some way” on the wealthiest Americans if Obama wins a second term in office.
“No,” replied Boehner. “Raising taxes, according to Ernst and Young, would threaten our economy with a loss of 700,000 jobs. Now why would I ever be for something like that? I’m not.”
Boehner’s stance isn’t exactly party-wide. Senior Republicans in the House and Senate admit that if Obama is re-elected, he will have leverage to push for allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire on income above $250,000, reports the Washington Post .
Representative Tom Cole, a senior member of the budget committee, says that if Obama is elected in November, taxes are likely to increase for wealthy families. “This is a referendum on taxes,” Cole said. “If the president wins reelection, taxes are going up” for the nation’s wealthiest, and “there’s not a lot we can do about that.”
Still, Representative Trey Gowdy said that if Republicans maintain control of the House, he’d be “really surprised if we capitulate on what’s essentially a core fundamental of conservative orthodoxy.”
Additionally, the GOP is bracing for election loss by doing something rather radical: Compromising. “[I]f things stay as they are, and all the players are generally the same … finding a responsible reform for Medicare is the secret to unleashing very productive talks that would put in place a balanced solution to our fiscal problems,” Republican Senator Bob Corker said. “If you deal with the Medicare issue, then Republicans are far more open to looking at revenues.”
