President Obama is scheduled to address the press in the East Room of the White House just before noon ET to renew his call for extending the Bush tax cuts for anyone making less than $250,000 a year.
Nothing is going to happen on this until after the election, but this sets the stage for the election to actually decide this issue. Want a mandate? Run on the thing you want a mandate to do. By thrusting the tax issue into the center of the presidential campaign, Obama is doing just that.
If you’re an anti-tax Republican, that’s not a bad thing either. If Obama loses, you’ve staked a claim to a mandate on the issue, too. Yeah, the mandate could get muddied if Obama wins and Democrats lose the Senate, or other conflicting outcomes. But this is what elections should be about. By November, the parties will have spent much of the last two years jockeying and debating the Bush tax cuts, to what is basically a standoff. So let the voters decide.
Game on.
David Kurtz
David Kurtz is Managing Editor and Washington Bureau Chief of Talking Points Memo where he oversees the news operations of TPM and its sister sites.