President Obama’s spokesman urged the top tax chairmen in Congress Thursday not to “lose any sleep” about the possibility of the president raising taxes through unilateral executive action.
“To the extent that there is a lot of fretting and hand-wringing on Capitol Hill, I would urge them to not lose any sleep over this,” said White House press secretary Josh Earnest, who added that the president doesn’t have any “imminent decision” to announce on taxes.
Mr. Earnest’s comment came in response to a letter from Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, who said they were troubled by White House’s announcement earlier this month that Mr. Obama was “very interested” in exploring options to raise taxes without going through Congress. They said such action would violate the Constitution and ruin chances for any lasting deal.
On Thursday, although Mr. Earnest downplayed the possibility, he still wouldn’t rule out such a move by the president.
“The president certainly, when he’s talking to his team, doesn’t take off the table any options that may be available using his own executive authority to try to move the country forward and to move our tax code in a direction of fairness,” Mr. Earnest said.
If Republican lawmakers are worried, he said, “maybe it’s worth burning a little midnight oil to try to get to work in bipartisan fashion to take some common-sense steps in the direction of business-tax reform that would make our tax code more fair but also stand to channel more benefits to the middle class.”
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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