Northern Colorado Gazette

by Jack Minor

The president chastised tea party members for not wanting to raise taxes or raise the debt limit saying candidates were “rewarded for saying irresponsible things.”

This morning, the president held a press conference to address the breakdown in budget negotiations. Late Saturday evening, house speaker, John Boehner, announced he was pulling out of negotiations for a large scale deficit reduction plan. Boehner issued a statement saying, the “white house will not pursue a bigger debt reduction agreement without tax hikes.”

Obama said he would not sign any temporary extension of the debt limit if Congress could not agree on a deal. When asked about the 69% of the American people opposed to raising the debt limit, Obama dismissed their opinions saying they aren’t paid to worry about it. He went on to say if he phrased the question to say if they favored having the country go into another recession, and for interest and inflation to go up if we don’t raise the debt limit that he could get a majority of the American people to agree with him.

When asked about Boehner having control over his caucus the president saying the leaders have to do the right thing regardless of constituent’s wishes. “This is part of the problem when folks are rewarded for saying irresponsible things.” The majority of the new Republican members of Congress ran on a pledge of no new taxes.

Once again, the president mentioned corporate jets, however, experts have said the proposed tax would only raise an estimated $3 billion over 10 years. That amount would only fund the federal government for a matter of minutes. In actuality, the amount raised could be less as corporations would probably delay the purchase of new aircraft, which could cause layoffs in the manufacturing industry. A similar thing happened when the government passed a luxury tax on yachts and furs.

The president accused Republicans of not seriously pursuing budget cuts. “They say we’ve got to get government spending and our deficits under control. I said ‘let’s go.” So where are they?”

Earlier in the week, the UAW sent out an action alert asking members to sign a petition to President Obama, telling him to stop a deal on the debt limit and deficit that does not include raising taxes.

Unemployment figures increased to 9.2% for the month of June. The figures have cause some to say raising taxes on businesses at this time could cause the country to slide into a double dip recession. Obama said the reason for the rise in unemployment numbers, is the phasing out of the stimulus bill.

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