If Linda McMahon were a U.S. senator right now, she’d join with her fellow Republican senators — and against leading Republican U.S. representatives — on the showdown du jour over tax cuts.
At least that’s what Linda McMahon the candidate for U.S. Senate says.
She said it Tuesday afternoon during a press conference at the Mobil station off I‑95 on New Haven’s Long Wharf.
“I don’t think a tax increase is what we ought to be doing at this time,” McMahon said. It’s “anti-growth.”
The candidate gathered the statewide political press corps there on a day when a new poll showed her cruising even closer to her once way-ahead opponent in the campaign for Connecticut’s open Senate seat, Democrat Richard Blumenthal. (Click here to read about that poll. Click here to read a skeptical analysis of its results.)
She and the reporters spent most of the half-hour exchange focusing on the poll results. But McMahon did answer questions for four minutes and 48 seconds about the most pressing issue currently facing sitting Senators: whether to extend the soon-to-expire Bush tax cuts.
Click on the play arrow above to watch highlights of that discussion. (Apologies for the sound quality: the wind along Long Wharf didn’t cooperate.)
The debate now is not about the majority of those cuts. Democrats and Republicans in both houses of Congress, along with President Barack Obama, have agreed to extend them at the end of the year.
The argument is over the temporary tax cuts affecting the wealthiest Americans, individuals earning more than $200,000 a year and families taking home more than $250,000 a year. Republicans also want to extend those cuts, arguing that in a recession people need that extra money to create jobs. Obama and Democratic Congressional leaders want to let them expire; they argue that the wealthiest taxpayers save that money rather than invest in creating jobs, and that extending them will worsen the deficit.
House Republican leader John Boehner shocked the Capitol this week by saying that, even though he supports preserving all the tax cuts, he’s willing to vote to support a compromise that left out that top rate. He said he would do that to deprive the Democrats of a campaign issue, accusing Republicans of holding up a middle-class tax cut in order to shield the wealthy.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell followed by saying his colleagues would not follow suit in the Senate. They’d push for all or nothing: a bill that extends all tax cuts, or no bill.
In response to questions Tuesday, McMahon said she’s on McConnell’s side of the debate.
“I am absolutely in favor of keeping the tax rates the way they are today,” she said.
The House majority leader has said he wants to do that too, but that a compromise is needed to push through the majority of tax cuts for middle-class Americans.
“I would push forward to maintain for everyone the tax law that is in place now,” McMahon repeated.
“We want to continue to grow jobs and encourage growth.”
She was asked whether she believes that the top-tier taxpayers save the money they keep from marginal tax cuts, as some economists argue; or whether she believes they pour that money back into creating new jobs, as many of her fellow Republicans argue.
She said the latter. Many of the people in the $200,000-and-up bracket own small businesses, she said. “Small businesses create 70 percent of jobs .… Increasing tax on them creates more of a burden.”
She was also asked about whether extending those tax rates worsens the deficit. “You always look at how you’re going to close the deficit. You’re going to close the deficit by creating jobs and putting people back to work,” she responded. When you “encourage businesses to grow and hire more people, they’re going to pay more taxes.”
She added that she doesn’t agree with idea that “increasing tax rates increases tax revenues.”
Democratic candidate Blumenthal has come out with the Obama position: extend all tax cuts except those in the upper bracket.
His campaign spokeswoman, Maura Downes, released this statement Tuesday afternoon in response to McMahon’s position: ““Middle class families in Connecticut are hurting. They need this tax cut, which is why Dick supports extending the cuts for the middle class. Linda McMahon, on the other hand, would turn her back on middle class families and hold them hostage in order to give a tax cut to millionaires that will add $700 billion to the federal deficit. She just doesn’t get it .”
Paul Bass Photo
McMahon facing the press at Long Wharf Tuesday.
![http://lh3.ggpht.com/_pQyvcBbJ0Fs/TIgjbk6s_RI/AAAAAAAACkU/Lbd_vpoCpmk/image[5].png?imgmax=800](https://lh3.ggpht.com/_pQyvcBbJ0Fs/TIgjbk6s_RI/AAAAAAAACkU/Lbd_vpoCpmk/image[5].png?imgmax=800){kind=link}
Seems reasonable that I pay a bit more in taxes than those making less than I , and that those with higher incomes than I pay more than I.
Claims that the "job providers" should get exespeciallyow rates are BS.
Maybe retaining only half of the Bush tax cuts for the richest would be OK and not have an effect on job development.
Does not make me a communist, or a Dem, and I'll still vote for the Wrestling Queen, or more accurately, against Blumenthal and most Dems this year.