Senior Republicans say they will be forced to retreat on taxes if President Obama wins a second term in November, clearing the biggest obstacle to a deal with Democrats to defuse a year-end budget bomb that threatens to rock the U.S. economy.
The Washington Post’s Felicia Sonmez, who covers Paul Ryan on the campaign trail, previews the vice presidential candidate’s appearance Friday at AARP.
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Republicans have long resisted tax increases of any kind. But taxes are a major battleground in the campaign between Obama and Republican Mitt Romney, Capitol Hill veterans say, and the victor will be able to claim a mandate for his policies.
“This is a referendum on taxes,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a senior member of the House Budget Committee. “If the president wins reelection, taxes are going up” for the nation’s wealthiest households, and “there’s not a lot we can do about that.”
With Election Day still more than six weeks away and the president holding a thin lead in national polls, Republicans say they are not conceding that an Obama victory is the likely outcome. But they are beginning to plan for that possibility.
Lawmakers expect to leave town Friday and will not return until mid-November, when they will have little time to head off $500 billion in automatic tax increases and spending cuts set to take effect Jan. 2.
If Romney wins the White House, Republicans say, their strategy is clear: They would push to maintain current tax rates through 2013, giving the new president time to draft a blueprint for overhauling the tax code and taming the $16 trillion national debt.
But if Obama wins, the GOP would have no leverage — political or procedural — to force him to abandon his pledge to raise taxes on family income over $250,000, according to senior Republicans in the House and the Senate.
So they are beginning to contemplate a compromise that would let taxes go up in exchange for Democratic concessions on GOP priorities.
At the very least, that would mean protecting the Pentagon from the budget ax, which is set to whack $55 billion out of national security accounts next year. But it could also mean major changes to Medicare, which many Republicans said could quickly become the new front in the partisan battle over the budget.
“I hope, obviously, the status quo doesn’t prevail” on Nov. 6. “But if 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,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.). “If you deal with the Medicare issue, then Republicans are far more open to looking at revenues.”
Difficult details would have to be hammered out. And any compromise would face head winds in the House, where a large bloc of GOP freshmen opposed new taxes during a messy fight to raise the federal debt limit last summer.
Many say they that are still not ready to agree to higher taxes and that they will press to maintain tax rates for families at all income levels no matter who wins the White House.
“As long as we have control of the House, I’m going to be really surprised if we capitulate on what’s essentially a core fundamental of conservative orthodoxy,” said Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.).
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