|
|
The
views expressed
on this page are soley those of the author and do not
necessarily
represent the views of County News Online
|
Heritage
Network
Morning Bell:
House Republicans Cave on Tax Increases and Punt Entitlements
By Amy Payne
December 4, 2012
When President Obama put forth his first offer on the fiscal cliff,
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said, “You can’t be serious.” We
could say the same thing to the Speaker after his counteroffer
yesterday.
In a letter signed by House Republican leadership, including Majority
Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan
(R-WI), Boehner offered to raise taxes by $800 billion and cut spending
by $1.4 trillion, with no substantive reforms to the entitlement
programs that are driving U.S. spending and debt.
Heritage’s Alison Fraser, director of the Roe Institute for Economic
Policy Studies, and J.D. Foster, the Norman B. Ture Senior Fellow in
the Economics of Fiscal Policy, quickly responded that “the Republican
counteroffer, to the extent it can be interpreted from the hazy details
now available, is a dud. It is utterly unacceptable. It is bad policy,
bad economics.”
Boehner’s letter to the President actually said that the Republicans
were not going to make their more serious proposal, which has already
passed the House.
If we were to take your Administration’s proposal at face value, then
we would counter with the House-passed Budget Resolution. It assumes an
overhaul of our tax code with revenue remaining at historically normal
levels and proposes structural reforms to preserve and protect the
Nation’s entitlement programs, ensuring they are sustainable for the
long-term rather than continuing to grow out of control.
But, they said, “we recognize it would be counterproductive to publicly
or privately propose entitlement reforms that you and the leaders of
your party appear unwilling to support in the near-term.”
This is precisely the time for laying out bold reforms, showing the
nation the principles, vision and policies conservatives share to dig
out of this budget mess, today and for the long term. Instead, the
leadership pointed to a plan they said was suggested by Erskine Bowles,
the co-chair of President Obama’s debt commission and formerly Bill
Clinton’s White House Chief of Staff. It raises taxes, but not by
raising tax rates—instead, by lowering the amount or number of tax
deductions or exemptions available.
Read the rest of the article at the Heritage Network
|
|
|
|
