The New York Times reports that Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl backs away from a deal to shave $4 trillion from the deficit because it involves tax hikes:
For all the battles over the budget, the meeting on Thursday was, by all accounts, cordial and businesslike. Mr. Obama, seated between Mr. Boehner and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, told the lawmakers he would not sign an interim deal, only one that extended through the 2012 election.
Then he surveyed the eight leaders about their preference for three deals of different sizes — the largest being up to $4 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade, according to aides briefed on the discussion.Six of the eight expressed their support for the biggest deal, the aides said. But Representative Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, and Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, favored the midrange $2 trillion, voicing doubts about how they could sell a $4 trillion deal to their rank and file, officials said, since it would involve tax increases.
Sen. Kyl: If you’re serious about deficit reduction, you need to show some leadership within your party.
This article appears in Jul 7-13, 2011.
Wow people still don’t understand that businesses i.e. corporations don’t pay taxes they are pass throughs to employees and consumers. So if you raise taxes on coporations 2 things happen. Employment shrinks in order to pay those taxes. Prices increase to cover taxes.
People also don’t seem to understand that the $1.2 trillion (not counting unreported spending on things like the CIA’s drone war, bribes to corrupt foreign officials, etc) the federal gov’t spends annually on the imperial warmongering/security/surveillance state and the $1.5 trillion annual budget deficit are related.
DooDah, where do you get your data? OMB puts the 2010 military budget, including Homeland security and Veterans affairs at only 819 billion and is on it’s way down, while HHS spends 50 billion more and is on it’s way to 30%+ increase in the next four years. All spending needs to be cut. Under Obama spending is at it’s highest peace time level of over 25% of GDP. It averages only 18% since WWII, and that would require cuts of 1 trillion each year to reach average. The debt limit is more about cutting spending than increasing income so let’s cut now extend the debt limit, and then find ways to grow the economy and increase income. . .
Agree with AZRally. Makes sense. We need to reduce taxes on small business, increase taxes on large corporations like GE who find all kinds of tax loopholes. We should also tax these coporations who outsource and tax everything from these foreign countries that we import from. This just might discourage outsourcing and bring back the businesses, industries and jobs that we once had. It would also do wonders for reducing our debt and increase our GDP. We, citizens, might not be rocket scientists, but common sense can do wonders. Unfortunately, our leaders seem to have left their brains and common sense somewhere else.