Both Texas U.S. Rep. Ron Paul and former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich agree with the extension, their campaigns confirmed to IowaPolitics.com this week. They support keeping the tax on workers’ wages at a 4.2 percent rate, rather than the normal 6.2 percent rate, as a way to keep more money in the pockets of middle-income Americans.Mitt Romney and Michelle Bachmann, apparantely, oppose working Americans keeping more of their own money. Rick Perry could not be reached.
With Bachmann, this is nothing news. She wants the "perfect" bill -- though won't do any actual work to improve the bill (hasn't even chaired a subcommittee in almost five years in the House) -- and when it's not there, she stands up and says, "No!"
She can do that because she knows her vote will not be the deciding one on any of these issues. If she was President, I can almost guarantee she would sign the bill -- because she couldn't hide. (It's the same principle that allowed Senator Barack Obama to rail against raising the debt celing only a few years before President Obama said not raising the ceiling would result in doomsday.)
Writes Hess:
Supporting the payroll tax cut extension aligns with the views of conservative leaders in Iowa, including Polk County GOP Chairman Kevin McLaughlin of Des Moines. McLaughlin serves as president and founder of Iowans for Discounted Taxes, a nonprofit that advocates for lower tax rates.
"They can make it permanent as far as I’m concerned," said McLaughlin, who has lobbied for state property and income tax relief. "If you really want to get the economy up and running, you want to discount the income taxes too, so that all the consumers that use those businesses have more to spend."
