Obama administration aides appealed to the Reuters White House reporting team to kill a story by another reporter of the news service that suggested the president’s new budget blueprint included “backdoor” tax hikes.
A White House official told TPMDC the Reuters story was “falsely stating that the President’s budget raises taxes for middle class families, when in fact the opposite is true.”
The official said when the administration saw the story, published yesterday afternoon, they contacted one of the Reuters White House correspondents.
The White House pushed these points:
– Our budget explicitly calls for permanently extending the Bush tax cuts for households making less than $250,000.
– Our budget explicitly calls for allowing the top rate on dividends to increase to 20% for households making over $250,000.
– Our budget accounts for the cost of continuing the AMT “Patch”. The last administration’s budgets ignored these costs, but we explicitly account for them.
– Our budget extends expiring tax provisions through 2011.
The official said the Reuters White House team “worked to quickly remedy the situation and helped get the story completely withdrawn” last night.
The original article included a list of what the author deemed tax increases that included allowing a $250 tax credits for teachers buying supplies to expire, for example.
The White House official pointed TPM to the specific page on the budget proving that wrong.
As Rachel Slajda reported earlier, Reuters confirmed to TPM that the White House complained about the piece.
