President Obama on Monday proposed a one-year extension of the George W. Bush-era tax cuts for people making less than $250,000 a year, his latest election-year effort to appeal to middle-class voters by resuming a long-standing debate over tax fairness.

The move is likely to set up another standoff with Republicans in Congress, who support extending the tax cuts for one year for all income levels, not just for those making less than $250,000 per year.

A repeal vote on Obamacare and small business tax cuts are on the agenda after a week-long recess.

But the White House is calculating that forcing the GOP to reject the president’s proposal would put Republican lawmakers in a difficult position at a time when many Americans are struggling in a tough economy. And Obama also aims to sharpen the distinction with likely Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who backs extending the tax cuts for all income levels.

“Most people agree we should not raise taxes on middle-class families or small businesses,” Obama said, appearing in the East Room with families and workers who would benefit from the initiative.“Not when so many people are trying to get by.”

Obama said that Republicans believe that the best way to build the economy is to give tax breaks to the wealthy, and he charged that “top-down economics” during the Bush era helped lead to the economic recession.

“I disagree. I think they’re wrong,” Obama said. “I think our prosperity comes from an economy built on a strong and growing middle class. . . . It’s time to let the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, folks like myself, expire.”

The tax cuts dating to the Bush administration are set to expire for all income levels at the end of this year. Obama’s proposal to extend the cuts for lower-earning Americans would cost the government $150 billion in revenue in 2013, according to the New York Times, which first reported on the administration’s announcement Sunday night.

House Republicans argued that the president’s approach would harm small-business owners by raising taxes on them. GOP lawmakers pledged to produce their own plan to overhaul the nation’s tax code, and they have scheduled a House vote July 23 on a Republican proposal to extend the tax cuts for all income earners.

“President Obama is still asleep at the switch when it comes to our economy and jobs,” House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said Monday. “In the wake of another weak jobs report, the president is doubling down on his quixotic call for the same small-business tax hikes that have been routinely rejected by the House and Senate.”

Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul called the president’s proposal “a massive tax increase. It just proves again that the president doesn’t have a clue how to get America working again.”

But Obama said 98 percent of the public, as well as 97 percent of small-business owners, would fall under the $250,000-per-year threshold.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said at his daily briefing that Obama would veto any bill that extends the tax cuts for all income levels, arguing that eliminating the tax breaks for wealthier Americans, who don’t need the money, would help pay down the deficit

I am in favor of extending the cuts to those earning less than
$250K indefinitely adjusted for inflation!

Continuing the Bush era tax breaks for the rich have not helped improve the job market. (Ask any republican if the job market has improved)....lolol I mean you can't have it both ways, either the tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans have helped create jobs or they haven't.
we all know the answer to that.

The kenyan is doing his best to get another term.
Why?

Would you expand your business knowing that in a year your taxes would rise?

Hope and change?

But can you prove it hasn't kept the job market from being worse?

All the research points to record profits with the job market remaining flat. It is not a matter of having enough money to invest so even more money (tax breaks) doesn't appear to be the answer for corporations.

Let me see, would I expand if I knew that in a year every NEW dollar of profit meant giving an extra dime to the government. Yes I think I could live with that.

It's all a bunch of election year politics which is not how the country should be governed.

They should start from scratch and redo the tax code eliminating loopholes and tax breaks for special interest.

Profits have nothing to do with labor demand.