Congress may be out, but that doesn’t mean President Obama can’t score some political points from its inertia.
He’s been doing that since the end of June, repeating at virtually each public appearance a mantra-like list of actions that Congress could do “right now” to help the economy.
The President was at it again Monday, speaking to an audience in Cannon Falls, Minnesota. Trade deals, rebuilding projects, red-tape slashing… President Obama said these were all things Congress could tackle “right now,” or at the very least once it’s back in session.
One item he included in that list is shaping up to be a key part of the White House’s strategy in the coming months: the payroll tax holiday.
Contrary to conservative smears against the President as a tax-raising liberal, this is a tax break he is battling to keep in the face of Republican opposition.
Passed in December 2010, the tax cut had put $1000 “in the pocket of a typical family,” Obama told the gathering. He described a kind of virtuous cycle produced by this mini-stimulus: “You’ve got more money in your pockets to spend to meet your obligations. It also means that businesses have more customers. And it means that they might hire a few more folks as a consequence.”
Given that this echoes the arguments Republicans make for extending the controversial Bush tax cuts, you’d think they would be leaping at the chance to agree with him. After all, he’s urging Congress to renew it.
However, House and Senate Republicans have been unusually brusque about this tax-cut extension. Instead, they’ve been denouncing “short term gestures,” and pushing for “long-term fundamental changes” to America’s tax structure. These are changes that almost certainly cannot be worked out in short order, and so if the tax cut holiday expires, bizarrely it will be Republican belligerence that will have caused a tax increase. So why won’t Republicans work by the lessons of their own logic and permit a minor tax cut that could have a small but immediate effect on the economy? Could it possibly have anything to do with the 2012 elections? Perish the thought.
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