Obama Spoils for an Election Year Tax Fight

In theory, Republicans would happily get behind President Barack Obama’s proposal to reduce the U.S. corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 28 percent and eliminate some loopholes. Most members of Congress profess to find both high taxes and loopholes odious and agree with Obama when he says the current system is “outdated, unfair, and inefficient.” Testifying on Capitol Hill earlier this month, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner suggested optimistically that there was “more room for common ground” on tax reform.

That’s in theory. In practice, the GOP regarded the President’s announcement less like an outstretched hand than an election year trap. It wasn’t an unreasonable assumption. If a campaign-year proposal to cut taxes would have been encroaching on Republican turf, a proposal to cut corporate taxes rates was an outright raid on their clubhouse. Obama was plainly challenging them to say no.