Obama, in New Hampshire, Urges Payroll Tax Break

Published: November 22, 2011 - New York Times

MANCHESTER, N.H. — President Obama plunged into the heart of Republican primary land on Tuesday to deliver a direct challenge to Congress to act quickly to extend and expand the payroll tax cut when lawmakers return from the Thanksgiving holidays next week.

Laying out his proposal in deliberately simple and stark terms, the president told an audience here that if Republicans in Congress vote no, middle-class families will have to pay an additional $1,000 in taxes next year when the temporary break ends.

“Next week, they’ll get a simple vote,” Mr. Obama said. “No, your taxes go up. Yes, you get a tax cut. Which way do you think Congress should vote?”

The crowd cheered “yes,” as Mr. Obama went on to urge them to call their Congressional representatives and urge them to support the extension and expansion of the tax cut, which Congressional Republicans have previously rejected when it was part of the president’s overall jobs bill. Now Mr. Obama is parsing out parts of the bill that he thinks have better chances of passage.

“If your members of Congress aren’t listening, you’ve got to send them a message,” Mr. Obama said. “Tell them, don’t be a Grinch.”

White House officials derided suggestions that Mr. Obama’s trip to New Hampshire — where Republican presidential aspirants have been working overtime in advance of the state’s primary in January — had any political overtones. “There are a lot of states that matter in the political process — if he didn’t travel to any of them, we would severely limit our ability to travel,” said the White House press secretary, Jay Carney, in remarks to reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Manchester. Mr. Obama, Mr. Carney maintained, would “not be talking about the many different Republican candidates.”

But right after saying that, Mr. Carney took a swipe at Mitt Romney, who unveiled his first television commercial of the campaign on Tuesday in New Hampshire, in which he attacked Mr. Obama for his economic leadership. The ad features Mr. Obama’s saying “if we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose,” an editing down of something he did say in 2008. What Mr. Obama actually said, but the Romney ad edited out, was: “Senator McCain’s campaign actually said, and I quote, ‘If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.’ ”

In an e-mail, the Romney campaign defended the quotation. “The tables have turned,” the e-mail said.

“Seriously?” Mr. Carney said. He called it an “ad in which they deliberately distort what the president said.”

While Mr. Obama is running unopposed in the Democratic primary in New Hampshire, this is a state that he won in 2008, and would dearly like to win again next year. His trip seemed especially timed to suck away some air from the Republican primary campaigning that has been going on here in advance of the January primary.

Indeed, Mr. Obama’s trip had all of the trappings of a campaign stop. The president took the time to work a rope line of supporters after Air Force One landed in Manchester, then headed — driving past campaign signs for Rick Perry and Rick Santorum — to the archetypal stop at Julien’s Corner Kitchen, a local eatery where he chatted over coffee with a local family.

Then it was off to his marquee event at Manchester High School Central, where he bounded onto the stage as the high school band played a rousing version of “Hail to the Chief,” albeit at a slightly slower tempo than usual.

“We set up a straightforward calculator on whitehouse.gov,” the president said, grinning. He urged people to check it out so that they could see exactly how a vote for or against the payroll tax proposal would affect them.