With less than three weeks until the August 2 deadline, time is running out on a debt ceiling agreement. Yet both sides of the aisle in Washington seem no closer to a deal.
At the center of the impasses are taxes. Republicans are standing firm against any notion of explicit tax hikes or closing tax loopholes. Meanwhile, President Obama says any tax increases he's asking for won't come until 2013.
That's not good enough for The Daily Ticker's guest Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI). In the accompanying interview with Aaron Task, McCotter says there's no room to negotiate on what he calls "job killing tax hikes" and that "the Republicans have rightly held out against raising taxes in a recessed and stagnant economy."
Americans "understand that when you take money out of people's pockets and put it into the hands of bureaucrats, there's not going to be economic growth -- certainly in the near term, let alone for the long term prosperity of the people."
When asked about his willingness to compromise, McCotter added that "compromising for the sake of compromising is generally what put you in the position where we are today, which is staring at a debt ceiling crisis."
Instead of putting tax cuts on the table, McCotter and other Republicans are calling for a hard cap on government spending. He argues that increasing the debt will pull productivity out of the private sector. If you don't limit costs, he says, "what you compromise is the future economic opportunities of the American people."
Is he right? Is there no room to compromise on taxes?
