Politics
Obama heads to Ohio as campaign begins to warm up
He still wants to extend a payroll tax cut for all of 2012. Republicans avoided being blamed for a tax increase last month when House GOP leaders agreed to a two-month extension. A longer version will have to be decided by the end of February. Obama is also likely to point to elements of a jobs package he advanced last year that failed in the face of Republican opposition.
Obama is also at odds with Senate Republicans over his nomination of Richard Cordray as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a central feature of new bank regulations that Congress approved and Obama signed in 2010. Republicans are blocking Cordray’s appointment, effectively hamstringing the bureau’s work. Battling Wall Street overreach has been a recurrent Obama theme as he advocates for the middle class.
Signaling that he would continue to draw sharp lines between the middle class and the wealthy, Obama told the Iowa Democrats in his videoconference Tuesday that he would insist on the rich paying more in taxes.
“If we’re going to make the investments that we need for our kids at the same time as we’re controlling our deficit, then there’s nothing wrong with saying to millionaires and billionaires that we’re going to let your tax cuts expire,” Obama said. “The other party has a fundamentally different philosophy.”
Administration officials say they were especially encouraged by the public’s response to Obama’s call for extending the payroll tax cut and indicate Obama will make such appeals repeatedly to gain leverage over Congress and Republicans, in particular.
“There are more things that need to be done,” Carney said Tuesday. “There are elements of the jobs act that we believe, as we did from the beginning, merit bipartisan consideration and support. This country is in crying need of work on its infrastructure.”
In speaking at Shaker Heights High School on Wednesday, Obama is returning to a Cleveland suburb that he visited in 2009 while pushing his health care overhaul plan. Obama also planned to meet with a family at their home, a tactic Obama has employed before to personalize his agenda.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.
