Business pushes to extend tax cuts

The business community and anti-tax groups are sloping up their campaign to win an extension of the Bush tax breaks for the wealthy and hand President Barack Obama and his economic team a defeat just in time for Election Day.

This battle, however, is about other than just winning one policy fight. It’s also about clutching an eleventh-hour opportunity and maximizing gains that have largely eluded corporate interests since Obama took office.

With Democrats on the ropes on the campaign trail and cringing from the idea of another tough vote, conservatives now find themselves with a better than fair shot at getting all of President George W. Bush’s tax cuts extended — at least for a couple of years, a prediction that would have been deemed laughable two years ago.

Then, if the Democrats fall in November, the business community can try to make those tax cuts permanent and still pocket a handful of other tax breaks that Obama put on the table in topical weeks — a move one corporate insider dismissed mockingly as “flailing in the face of November.”
Business leaders disagree that a tax hike timed to hit the wealthiest Americans in January would stall job growth by hobbling small businesses and shrinking money available for investments that could help spur new economic activity.

Advocates of revoking the tax breaks dispute that argument, saying only a tiny percentage of small businesses would be affected and that an influx of federal cash is needed to help pay for the extension of Bush’s middle-class tax cuts and support more-effective jobs programs.

To push back on that message, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday will steer into town executives from more than 40 small-to-medium-sized businesses for a tax policy briefing that will close with a lobbying blitz on Capitol Hill.

The Business Roundtable, meanwhile, has 87 chief director officers from major corporations coming to Washington the same day, and their dance cards are full, too. Among those scheduled to assemble down with the CEOs are White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.).

“Our situation is that this is not the time to raise any taxes. The economy is very frail,” said Johanna Schneider, the Roundtable’s executive director for external affairs.

The Chamber’s grass-roots division has also helped engender more than 75,000 letters from constituents to lawmakers about the need to extend the credits; a similar letter was generated by its Tax Relief Coalition, which represents just about every trade group in town.

“We will go to the House Democrats who sent a letter to the president in January calling for an extension of the tax cuts and others — a increasing number of them on the battle trail — to try to see if they will join with us,” said Bruce Josten, the Chamber’s executive vice president for government affairs.

Americans for Tax Reform, a conservative group also calling for extension of the tax breaks, is running radio ads in House districts, placing belief pieces in local newspapers and writing letters to Capitol Hill lawmakers updating them of what ATR is doing in their home districts.

“We’re centering on the districts because lobbying is a waste of time when there is an election coming. Democrats and Obama may vote to prolong the tax rate reductions for two years because they fear losing the next election. They can’t be swayed it is bad policy,” said Grover Norquist, ATR’s president. “The only way to change their minds is to make them afraid of the voters. And if they don’t change their minds, the voters can change them.”