WASHINGTON -- House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) declared Thursday that seeking more revenue in order to reduce the federal deficit or to replace sequestration's pending budget cuts is tantamount to stealing from Americans.
Boehner was asked why House Republicans are ruling out any further tax hikes to fix America's finances, when the more than $2 trillion in deficit reduction passed over the last two years is weighted in favor of cuts over revenue by a ratio of more than two to one.
"The president got his tax hikes," Boehner told reporters on Capitol Hill, referring to some $600 billion in tax increases Congress passed in the fiscal-cliff deal that ended the Bush-era tax cuts on incomes above $400,000.
"The American economy is going to create more tax revenue this year than any other year in our history. We don't have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem," Boehner added. "How much more money do we want to steal from the American people to fund more government? I'm for no more."
President Barack Obama has proposed replacing the budget sequestration plan with another $600 billion in taxes by closing loopholes, as well as $930 billion in cuts.
Boehner also repeated his position that the House had no responsibility to propose a new replacement for sequestration because lawmakers passed two bills -- now expired -- to do so in the last Congress.
Those bills, however, replaced only a year's worth of sequestration, amounting to less than $100 billion. Sequestration mandates $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years, and neither of the GOP plans suggested how to find the entire amount.
Before You Go
