OPINION:
President Obama is asking Congress to raise taxes on job creators to pay for his “jobs” bill. On Monday, Mr. Obama said the Joint Select Committee for Deficit Reduction should find another $450 billion in deficit reduction (i.e., tax hikes) to bankroll his American Jobs Act, further impoverishing the nation while doing nothing to alleviate the 9.1 percent unemployment rate.
Fat-cat donors who paid $35,800 for a ticket in Manhattan heard it directly from “The One” on Monday: “We are going to keep pushing as hard as we can this week, next week and all the weeks that follow to try to get as much done as we can now.”
Mr. Obama will raise the tax rates on small businesses from 33 to 36 percent. The majority of these job creators file taxes as individuals, so if a given company profited more than $200,000, the administration classifies it as a “millionaire or billionaire” who owes more moolah to Uncle Sam.
“There shouldn’t be any reason for Congress to drag its feet,” the president pleaded from the Rose Garden. “I’m ready to sign a bill. I’ve got the pens all ready.” But Democrats are in no hurry to follow their leader. The Senate’s second-in-command, Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin, told CNN on Sunday that he doesn’t plan to bring up the bill until “next month.”
Other Senate Democrats, including Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu, Virginia’s Jim Webb, Alaska’s Mark Begich, Maryland’s Barbara Mikulski, Massachusetts’ John Kerry and Delaware’s Tom Carper have all openly distanced themselves from various aspects of the White House plan.
The idea is such a dud that no Democrat bothered to file Mr. Obama’s bill. Instead, clever House Republicans filed their own American Jobs Act, taking the title for themselves.
“We gave him a week, then we did it for him,” Rep. Louie Gohmert told The Washington Times in an interview. The Texas Republican’s two-page bill is much simpler than the president’s 155-pager.
“We have the highest corporate tax rate in the world,” Mr. Gohmert said, describing his plan. “You eliminate that 35 percent tariff that we stick on our own goods before they leave the U.S., not only will people come back into the U.S. for manufacturing jobs, but you’ll be able to compete globally.”
Rep. Ben Quayle introduced legislation to allow companies to opt out of certain regulations from Sarbanes-Oxley to make it easier for companies to go public, expand and thus hire new workers. The Arizona Republican summarized Mr. Obama’s problem to The Times: “The massive tax increases he proposes will negatively affect economic growth and job creation which is why Republicans and many Democrats firmly oppose them.”
Eliminating the corporate tax, cutting regulatory red tape and giving small businesses certainty about their tax liability would help create jobs. Mr. Obama is wasting his time and taxpayer money on junkets to the Midwest to sell his recycled tax-and-spend ideology. No one is buying it anymore.
Emily Miller is a senior editor for the Opinion pages at The Washington Times.
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