Campaign 2012 continues

Via-Washington Examiner

By Con Carroll

President Obama is not resting after his reelection victory last Tuesday. Instead he is planning an aggressive pubic campaign to build support for his higher taxes on the rich. This week he will meet with labor leaders on Tuesday and business leaders on Wednesday before traveling outside Washington in the coming weeks for more public campaign-like events.

“You want to avoid getting sucked into the Beltway inside-baseball games,” Joel Johnson, a former adviser in the Clinton White House told The New York Times. “You can still work toward solutions, but make sure you get out of Washington while you are doing that.”

Obama’s insistence on higher taxes on the rich seems to be carrying the day.
“It won’t kill the country if we raise taxes a little bit on millionaires,” Weekly Standard editor William Kristol said on Fox News Sunday. “The movement on the part of the GOP to say that revenues are part of this mix is significant,” added Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill.

The question is what, if anything, Republicans can get in return for agreeing to higher taxes. Many are suggesting that instead of raising rates on the rich, which is Obama’s first choice, Republicans can insist on keeping the current rates the same while closing some loopholes on mortgage interest deductions and charitable giving. Others suggest Republicans may be able to secure significant entitlement reform if they agree to higher revenues.

These are both terrible options. Raising revenues by closing loopholes only allows Obama and the Democrats to keep their current favorite tax hike talking point about “just returning to the Clinton era” tax rates. And no one believes that Obama would ever sign off on the kind of fundamental reform our entitlement programs really need.

The best option for Republicans is to give Obama what he wants on higher rates for the rich, but then use those revenues to protect middle class taxpayers by fixing the alternative minimum tax and preventing the defense sequester. Then Obama’s biggest tax hike talking point would be gone, his mandate would be spent, and Republicans could begin educating Americans about the truth of our financial problems: that we have a spending, not a revenue, problem.