Boehner to panel: Work on tax code

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

House Speaker John Boehner urged Congress’ deficit “supercommittee” on Thursday to lay the groundwork for a broad overhaul of the U.S. tax code, rejecting Democrats’ talk of tax increases but leaving open the possibility the government’s take could rise as a result.

Tax increases “are not a viable option” for the committee, Boehner declared in a speech to the Washington Economic Club, ruling out many of the proposals that President Barack Obama is expected to forward to the 12-member panel next week, including some that are part of his major jobs proposal.

Boehner made his remarks as White House officials disclosed that Obama intends to travel to Cincinnati next week as he campaigns for public support of his $447 billion proposal to cut into the nation’s 9.1 percent unemployment rate. The political symbolism of the site was unmistakable — an overcrowded bridge that links Boehner’s Ohio with Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell’s Kentucky, a span the president has cited as an example of the repair work his jobs program would make possible.

“We are going to run this like a campaign in the sense that we have to take it to the American people,” Obama said Thursday, describing the White House strategy to donors at a political fundraiser.

“The Republicans in the House, their natural instinct right now is not to engage in the cooperation we’d like to see,” he said.

Separately, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama will not recommend any budget savings from Social Security when he releases his recommendations to the deficit-cutting committee next week, despite the president’s signaling support for that idea in summertime debt- reduction talks with Boehner.

Carney declined to say what, if any, recommendations the president might make to find savings from Medicare.