White House press secretary Jay Carney said President Barack Obama is holding his current position of raising taxes on families making over $250,000 per year, dismissing questions about House Speaker John Boehner’s offer to increase rates on households earning over $1 million per year.
“I won’t comment on specific reported proposals or counter proposals on internal conversations between the president and the speaker or the president’s team and the speaker’s team or with other members of leadership,” Carney said at the White House press briefing on Monday.
“The president’s insistence that rates need to go up on the top 2 percent was based on an economic reality, which is that in order to achieve a broad deficit reduction package that puts our economy on a sustainable fiscal path in the future, a certain level of revenue gleamed from the wealthy has to be met and the only way to do that was through in part rates raising, that remains his position.”
Taxes would rise for all incomes if the White House and congressional leaders do not reach an agreement to avoid the fiscal cliff by the end of this year.
Carney added that the only plan the White House has “seen that achieves the size and the balance that’s required for sustainable — for long-term deficit reduction and putting our economy on a sustainable fiscal path is the president’s.”
Republican leaders argue that rates rising on families making over $250,000 would only fund about a week of government spending.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has continued her push for the Republican-controlled House to vote on a Senate bill that would only extend the current Bush-era tax rates for households earning less than $250,000 per year.