Obama: GOP, Dems Agree on Middle-Class Tax Cut Extension
Casting himself as a savior to the middle class, President Obama in his weekly address called on Republicans and Democrats to “at least agree to do what we all agree on” and extend the George W. Bush-era tax cuts for American families making less than $250,000 a year.
“That’s what compromise is all about,” Mr. Obama said, making a nearly four-minute case for his tax plan over the GOP’s “trickle down” approach that, he said, operates from the belief that “if we spend trillions more on tax cuts for the wealthy, it’ll somehow create jobs.”
Suggesting “the only place [Republicans and Democrats] disagree is whether we keep giving tax cuts to the wealthiest two percent of Americans,” the president said his path, by requiring the top two percent to pay “a little more” in income taxes exceeding the $250,000 threshold, would spare 98 percent of families from seeing any spike in income taxes.
“In other words, the wealthiest few Americans will go back to the income tax rates they were paying under Bill Clinton,” the president said. “And if you remember, that was when our economy created nearly 23 million new jobs, the biggest budget surplus in history - and millionaires were doing pretty well.”