Sam Stein has a “candid” David Alexrod telling him the president is ready to extend all the Bush tax cuts, at least temporarily.
“We have to deal with the world as we find it,” Axelrod said during an unusually candid and reflective 90-minute interview in his office, steps away from the Oval Office. “The world of what it takes to get this done.”
“There are concerns,” he added, that Congress will continue to kick the can down the road in the future by passing temporary extensions for the wealthy time and time again. “But I don’t want to trade away security for the middle class in order to make that point.”
It has been widely assumed that the president would have to accept an across-the-board deal of some kind, but Axelrod’s remarks were the first public confirmation of that fact — and by a figure regarded as closer to Obama than any other White House staffer.
And later
“We don’t want that tax increase to go forward for the middle class,” [Axelrod] said, which means the administration will have to accept them all for some unspecified period of time. “But plainly, what we can’t do is permanently extend these high income taxes.”
More here.
UPDATE: Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) sends this in response:
“While the President and some of his allies in Congress have a strange desire to raise taxes on hundreds of thousands of small businesses across the country, we would welcome the President’s help to extend all the current tax rates so that no one sees a tax hike. There is no reason we can’t work together to prevent equally a tax hike on families and small businesses. And while I’ve introduced the Tax Hike Prevention Act (S.3773), I’m willing to listen to what the President has in mind for protecting Americans from tax increases.”