President Obamas skattekutt-kompromiss

De siste par ukene har mye av debatten i  Wash­ington,  D.C. dreiet seg om skjebnen til de sagn­om­suste «Bush tax cuts» som ble inn­ført i 2001 og 2003. Skulle de videre­føres for noen eller alle?

Re­pub­li­ka­nernes posi­sjon har hele tiden vært at de må vi­dere­fø­res for alle inn­tekts­klas­ser, mens Obama har ar­gu­men­te­rt for at de kun bør vi­dere­fø­res for in­di­vi­der som tje­ner mindre enn $200 000 og fa­mi­lier som tje­ner mindre enn $250 000 (ca 1 500 000 norske kroner).

Klokken halv ett i natt norsk tid lan­serte Pre­si­dent Obama sitt kom­pro­miss. Skatte­kut­tene videre­føres for alle i to år. Det er hvert å lese hele Obamas utta­lelse, men her er kjernen:

I have no doubt that eve­ryone will find somet­hing in this com­pro­mise that they don’t like. In fact, there are things in here that I don’t like — namely the exten­sion of the tax cuts for the wealt­hiest Ame­ri­cans and the wealt­hiest estates. But these tax cuts will expire in two years. And I’m con­fi­dent that as we make tough choices about brin­ging our deficit down, as I engage in a con­ver­sa­tion with the Ame­rican people about the hard choices we’re going to have to make to secure our future and our children’s future and our grandchildren’s future, it will become appa­rent that we cannot afford to extend those tax cuts any longer.

As for now, I believe this bipar­tisan plan is the right thing to do. It’s the right thing to do for jobs. It’s the right thing to do for the middle class. It is the right thing to do for busi­ness. And it’s the right thing to do for our eco­nomy. It offers us an opport­u­nity that we need to seize.

It’s not perfect, but this com­pro­mise is an essen­tial step on the road to recovery. It will stop middle-class taxes from going up. It will spur our pri­vate sector to create mil­lions of new jobs, and add momentum that our eco­nomy badly needs.

Demo­kra­tene har hele tiden argu­men­tert for at repub­li­ka­nerne holdt «mid­del­klas­sens» skatte­kutt som gissel mot at også de høyere inn­tekts­klas­sene fikk sitt. Obama endte altså opp med at dette argu­mentet ville bety lite for mannen i gata dersom skat­tene hadde gått opp 1. januar 2011.