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Politico
John
Boehner: No tax hike on top
earners
By: Jake Sherman
November 5, 2012
COLUMBUS,
Ohio — You want to know
how unbending Speaker John Boehner is on tax increases?
He’s
not willing to even consider
hiking taxes on people making more than $1 million — something that’s
been
floated in the past as a possible compromise by members of both parties.
“We’re
not raising taxes on
small-business people,” Boehner told POLITICO during an interview in an
Italian
restaurant here. “Ernst and Young has made this clear: It’s going to
cost our
economy 700,000 jobs. Why in the world would we want to do that?”
Boehner’s
strong comments on the
eve of the election show just how tough a time President Barack Obama,
if he is
reelected, will have keeping his campaign promise to increase taxes on
individuals earning more than $250,000 per year.
Tuesday’s
congressional elections
are certain to give Boehner a stronger hand — at least on Capitol Hill
— as
Republicans are expected to lose only a handful of seats and maintain
an iron
hold on the House majority. Boehner sees this election as a validation
of his
no-tax-hike approach — and doesn’t view an Obama victory as a mandate
to raise
taxes on upper-income Americans.
“Listen,
our majority is going to
get reelected,” Boehner told POLITICO. “We’ll have as much of a mandate
as he
will — if that happens — to not raise taxes. He knows what we can do
and what
we can’t do — I’ve been very upfront with him about it going back over
the last
year and a half.”
Raising
taxes on incomes above $1
million has been seen by some as a potential compromise instead of
raising
taxes on incomes above $250,000, as Obama wants. Raising taxes only on
millionaires strikes a populist sentiment and has recently even been
received
favorably by senior Republican aides, who have queried Democrats about
their
openness to it…
Read
the rest of this article at
Politico
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