President Obama is angering supporters who believe he’s about to make another major concession to Republicans by abandoning his insistence that millionaires pay more in taxes to fund an extension of the payroll tax cut.
“So much for a really good talking point for Democrats in 2012,” wrote progressive blogger Joan McCarter on Daily Kos, lamenting the impending death of the Senate Democrats’ proposal for a surtax on millionaires.
The surtax on people earning more than $1 million was meant to fund a one-year extension of the Social Security payroll tax cut, which would inflate the paychecks of 160 million workers next year, as it has this year.
Obama has been urging Congress for weeks — through a series of speeches in Washington and visits to several battleground states — to extend the payroll tax cut, which expires Dec. 31.
“Some Republicans used to love these tax cuts, until I proposed them. But now they’re voting against this tax cut,” Obama said at a recent fundraiser. “They’ll fight with everything they have to protect the tax cuts of the wealthiest Americans, but they’ve got no problem breaking the oath when it comes to raising taxes on middle-class families, just to score some political points.”
House Republicans have refused to raise taxes on the wealthy and only agreed to extend the payroll tax cut if the administration pays for it through budget cuts. The Republican proposal also mandates construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, a project that would run from Canada to Texas and which Obama recently put on hold.
With Republicans unwilling to budge, Senate Democrats met with Obama and then offered Thursday to rescind their proposed millionaire’s surtax.
“I just heard that the Democrats have dropped the millionaire surtax for the payroll tax cuts,” wrote liberal blogger John Cole. “I never knew the amount of depression and self-loathing that was involved in becoming a Democrat. I honestly think I hate Democrats more now that I am one than I did when I was a Republican.”
This isn’t the first time Obama’s fellow Democrats have accused him of caving in to Republican demands. Democrats complained about his agreement to $1 trillion in spending cuts that Republicans demanded before agreeing to raise the nation’s debt ceiling. He had agreed to earlier budget cuts to avert a government shutdown.
White House officials downplayed Obama’s concessions, saying the millionaire’s surtax was never a top priority for the administration.
“The priority here is making sure that regular folks out there who get a paycheck don’t see their taxes go up by an average of $1,000 next year,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said. “The priority here, however, was not the pay-for. The focus on the pay-for is slightly mistargeted.”
He said Obama was never set on billing millionaires for the payroll tax cut extension.
“We have said from the beginning that we are open to different ways of paying for it,” Carney said.
