President Barrack Obama has launched a publicity campaign to push his bid to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans as he battles to break the deadlock over the congress’s deadlock over the ‘fiscal cliff’.
Obama has met business leaders and middle class families to try and convince the Republican Party to accept the need for inflicting tax increases on the wealthy whilst cutting taxes for families earning less than $250,000.
Emerging from talks with the President, small business leaders urged Obama to ‘fight to keep the middle-class cuts’. Lew Prince, co-founder of Vintage Vinyl, a small music store in St.Louis told reporters at the White House; “What grows jobs in America is consumer’s spending money, and the average person needs to two to three thousand dollars a year in his pocket to help drive the economy.
As usual the Republicans are opposing any plans to assist the poor and want to extend the low tax rates for the rich- enacted by former President George W. Bush over a decade ago. His plans granted tax breaks for all tax payers including all earners over $250,000. They claim that a tax hike on the wealthy ill harm investment and hiring at a time of high unemployment. Naturally the Democrats disagree.
“There’s been little progress with the Republicans, which is a disappointment to me,” Reid, a Nevada Democrat, told reporters yesterday.
They have thrown their support behind the President and are showing no signs of a retreat over the matter. The stalemate has caused the US Dollar to strengthen as investors seek shelter in its safe haven status as concerns grow that the world biggest economy could fall over the fiscal cliffs edge.
Failure to avert that situation could see the world being plunged back into recession. Hope remains that one side will back down and in recent days a number of Republicans have shown willingness to compromise over the tax increases. However, Grover Norquist, a powerful anti-tax lobbyist, acknowledged on Monday that those Republicans were having “impure thoughts”.
The USA has until the end of December to avert a potential global economic disaster, we all hope they will.
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