Business Leaders Urge Deficit Deal Even With More Taxes

By JACKIE CALMES, NYT

The partisan rift over taxes has blocked a deficit reduction deal for two years and has spilled into the 2012 campaigns. Yet as Republicans and Democrats continue to brawl, business leaders are increasing pressure on Washington to reach a deal on taxes and spending, even if it raises their own tax bills.

On Thursday morning, more than 80 executives of leading American corporations signed a statement calling for a deficit reduction compromise that would “include comprehensive and pro-growth tax reform, which broadens the base, lowers rates, raises revenues and reduces the deficit.”

Several members of the group, which includes highly paid chief executives of financial and industrial corporations who will stand to pay more if President Obama succeeds in his effort to raise taxes on the wealthy, then helped ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange to draw attention to their coalition, Fix the Debt. The group has raised $37 million for a nationwide education and lobbying effort.

Alarmed last year by Washington’s brinkmanship over raising the nation’s debt ceiling, these executives are now mobilizing to avert another such crisis at the turn of the year. After the November elections, they plan to press the two parties to compromise on a long-term substitute for the “fiscal cliff” — the immediate across-the-board spending cuts and tax increases that would affect nearly all Americans on Jan. 1, potentially sending the economy back into recession.

(More here.)