Week 9

Business Leaders Urge Deficit Deal Even With More Taxes
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/us/politics/business-leaders-urge-deficit-deal-even-with-more-taxes.html?ref=politics&_r=0
Article from The New York Times


The partisan rift over taxes has blocked a deficit reduction deal for two years and has spilled into the 2012 campaigns. Yet as Republicans and Democrats continue to dispute, business leaders are increasing pressure on Washington to reach a deal, even if it calls for more revenue, including higher tax bills for themselves.
On Thursday morning, more than 80 executives of leading American corporations signed a statement calling for a deficit reduction compromise that would "include comprehensive and pro-growth tax reform, which broadens the base, lowers rates, raises revenues and reduces the deficit."


The business leaders’ goal contrasts with the campaign messages of both parties. While the executives seem to answer Mr. Obama’s call for “economic patriotism” by their tentative embrace of higher personal taxes, in interviews many of them have rejected his “pay your fair share” talk as class warfare, and a good number oppose his re-election.

But the business leaders’ position also contradicts the stand of Mitt Romney and other Republicans, who say that all tax increases are “job killers,” that the federal budget can be balanced with spending cuts alone and that any overhaul of the tax code should be “revenue neutral,” neither raising nor lowering the government’s total tax collection.