White House Still Opposes Permanent Tax Cuts
NEW YORK (
) -- The Obama administration hasn't given in to Republican demands for a permanent extension of Bush-era tax cuts, White House adviser David Axelrod rushed to clarify Thursday after his interview with the
Huffington Post
Wednesday suggested that President Obama was willing to compromise on the contentious issue.
"I didn't say anything we haven't said before," Axelrod wrote in an email message, according to a
New York Times
report. He said the White House remains opposed to a permanent extension of tax cuts but were willing to discuss a temporary extension so as to not "trade away the security of the middle class."
"We have to deal with the world as we find it ... The world of what it takes to get this done," Axelrod told the
Huffington Post
in an interview on Wednesday, acknowledging the changed political climate following the mid-term elections.
The Huffington Post report caused a stir Thursday, with Republicans taking Axelrod's words as a strong signal that the Obama administration would give in to their demands.
"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," Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the chamber's top Republican, said in a statement on Thursday.
President Obama had already signaled soon after the mid-term election that he was open to tax-cut extension talks , inviting leaders of Republicans and Democrats from both houses for a meeting on Nov.18 to discuss the issue.
--Written by Shanthi Venkataraman in New York
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