Sen. Richard Shelby, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said the president’s middle-class economic proposals have no chance of becoming law and called his suggested tax hikes “an attack on the middle class.”
“A lot of his stuff is rhetoric. It’s not going anywhere,” Shelby said Sunday on “Fox News.”
The Alabama Republican said Obama has sent the message that he is unwilling to work with Congress by threatening to veto a series of legislation he opposes.
“I think if he wanted to, he could work with us, but I think he was real defiant the other night,” Shelby said, referring to the president’s State of the Union address Tuesday. “He was saying ‘Look, it’s my way, or the veto.’ ”
Shelby criticized a proposed hike in capital gains taxes and the president’s reluctance to slash corporate tax rates.
“There’s a lot of corporate money overseas that we need to bring back,” he said, suggesting the high rates keep companies abroad.
The banking chairman pushed for a tax overhaul that would allow Americans to keep more of their money.
“Most of the middle class wants to be left alone. They don’t want to be overtaxed,” Shelby said.
Many congressional Republicans have spoken out against Obama’s economic ideas in the days since the State of the Union, with leaders on both sides of Capitol Hill insisting they would never make it off the floor.
