Obama wins Mccain’s praise for reaching out
President now willing to compromise: Senator
WASHINGTON Senator John McCain said Republicans should compromise and increase tax revenues as part of a “long-term grand bargain” on the budget, and praised President Barack Obama for reaching out to senators across the aisle.
“I’m open — have always been open — to closing loopholes, eliminating special deals for special interests,” McCain said in an interview. “If you call that, ‘raising revenues,’ I’ve been guilty all my political career” of trying to cut special-interest loopholes.
Obama and congressional Democrats want to combine higher revenues with spending cuts to replace the $1.2 trillion in automatic budget cuts that began taking effect March 1. Many Republicans, including House Speaker John Boehner, have rejected tax increases, and the House last year voted to cut food stamps and other domestic programs rather than defence in order to avoid sequestration.
McCain, who lost to Obama in the 2008 election, said that in contrast to his first term, the president “has changed significantly” and is reaching out to Republicans.
“The question is: Will that translate into what I think we’ve got to do sooner or later, and that’s a grand bargain?” he said. “I am more than willing to give the president of the United States the opportunity to sit down and work with us. And we may have to make some concessions on our side.”
The government could reap “tens of billions” of dollars by ending tax breaks for Hollywood and companies such as Facebook Inc., McCain said. The social media company went public with $16 billion in deductions to lower future tax bills because of the way current law allows it to value stock options. In many cases, though, executives who receive the options will have to pay taxes on income from them.
“Why are we doing all these things that only benefit the special interests who still have enormous influence here?” McCain, 76, said. “Republicans have betrayed our base by allowing this kind of pork-barrel and earmark spending to go on.”
He didn’t identify enough loopholes to close in order to reach the $600 billion in new revenue that Obama has called for. The two-year extension of special expensing rules for movie and television productions that Congress enacted in January is estimated to cost only $248 million over 10 years. McCain also mentioned breaks for ethanol; a 45-cent tax credit that expired in 2011 after senators opposed its extension.
On immigration, McCain said bipartisan talks on Senate legislation to address the 11 million undocumented immigrants now in the U.S. are “making progress,” though issues remain to be resolved.
“A 90 per cent effective border control is really an important criteria,” McCain said. “There is a commitment on the part of all members not only to spend more on the border and expand the fences, but to use the technology that — if there’s anything good that came out of Iraq and Afghanistan — it’s this dramatically improved surveillance capabilities we have.”