Boehner: Tax increases off the table

In a speech at the Economic Club of Washington on Thursday, House Speaker John Boehner had a special message for members of the Congressional deficit supercommittee charged with finding ways to reduce the U.S. deficit by $1.5 trillion: No tax increases.

“When it comes to producing savings to reach its $1.5 trillion deficit reduction target, the Joint Select Committee has only one option: spending cuts and entitlement reform,” Boeher said in his prepared remarks.

"It's a very simple equation," Boehner said, according to CBS. "Tax increases destroy jobs. And the Joint Committee is a jobs committee. Its mission is to reduce the deficit that is threatening job creation in our country."

Boehner added that he would consider the expiration of the George W. Bush-era tax cuts at the end of 2012 to be tax increase. “When you raise somebody’s taxes, it’s a tax increase,” Boehner said to applause from the crowd, the Washington Post reports.

Previous deficit-reduction groups have all proposed a mixture of both spending cuts and revenue increases to reduce the country’s more than $14 trillion debt, the Washington Post notes.

It was Boehner’s first major speech since President Barack Obama unveiled his $447 billion jobs package last week and began traveling around the country to drum up support for his proposals.

According to the Washington Post:

Just as his early May address before the Economic Club of New York kicked off the debate over raising the country’s debt ceiling over the summer, Boehner’s remarks were meant to set the stage for the current negotiations with the White House over the handling of the debt and unemployment crises. Boehner did not issue a sweeping jobs plan in the same manner that Obama did last week, but many of the proposals were repackaged from similar offerings made in recent years.

Boehner dismissed Obama’s jobs plan as being insufficient to increase employment. “The president's proposals are a poor substitute for the pro-growth policies that are needed to remove barriers to job creation in America," he said. The Republicans argue that simplifying the tax code and cutting regulations would more effective.

One way the supercommittee could “enhance the environment for economic growth,” Boehner suggested, was to “develop principles for for broad-based tax reform that will lower rates for individuals and corporations while closing deductions, credits, and special carveouts in our tax code.”

Republicans have embarked on cutting 10 regulations they believe stifle job growth, Politico reports. This week, they were attempting to end the National Labor Relations Board’s ability to order an employer to move jobs from one state to another.