Boehner: ‘Tax Increases Destroy Jobs’

House Speaker John Boehner R-Ohio, responded to President Obama’s $447 billion jobs plan Thursday at the Economic Club of Washington, where he stuck to themes of tax reform, a decrease in regulation and government spending cuts. He also said the debt reduction committee should come up with $1.5 trillion in savings through spending cuts instead of taxing citizens.

“The joint committee is a jobs committee,” Boehner said.

Businesses have been “slammed by uncertainty by the constant threat of new taxes,” said Boehner, adding that he is concerned that “uncertainty is turning to fear, and that this toxic environment for job creation may be a permanent one.”

He decried governmental “intrusion and micromanagement” and said it’s time to “remove these barriers and liberate our economy.”

Tax increases, he reiterated, are “off the table” because “tax increases destroy jobs.”

Boehner also expressed a desire to work with President Obama and “put election year politics aside and focus on our work.”

As David Chalian and Terence Burlij noted in Thursday’s Morning Line, both sides must now strike a balance between political jockeying and the need to compromise:

After members went home in August and received fresh polling numbers showing them just how politically toxic the debt ceiling debate was, Rep. Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., have sought to strike a different tone.

But you shouldn’t mistake their ability to find attractive pieces of the president’s bill for a breakout of bipartisanship in Washington, D.C.