GOP: Taxing wealthy would stifle growth

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WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 (UPI) -- Republicans said Sunday that President Obama's plan to raise taxes on millionaires, set to be announced Monday, would hurt economic growth.

As a way to pay for his job's plan, Obama is expected to announce cuts to the nation's debt by ensuring that the country's millionaires pay at least the same percent in taxes as middle-income taxpayers.

Chairman of the House Budget Committee Paul Ryan, R.-Wis., said on "Fox News Sunday" the tax increase would stifle job growth.

"If you tax job creators more, you get less job creation. If you tax investment more, you get less investment," he said.

Ryan labeled Obama's tax increase as class warfare, saying there's little incentive to create jobs when U.S. businesses are taxed less than in other countries. He pointed to a law Obama pushed for 2013 that Ryan claimed would tax individual and small businesses up to 44.8 percent.

"The world taxes their businesses at about 25 percent and (Obama's) saying we're going to tax these (U.S.) job creators at above 45 percent with this new tax. What it does is it adds further instability to our system, more uncertainty and it punishes job creation and those people who create jobs," Ryan said.

Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain agreed, saying the millionaire tax is a "bad idea."

"If you were to tax the millionaires more using that bad idea, it still doesn't solve the problem of how to reduce the spending. So, that's just class warfare flowering in my opinion and it's not going to help," he said.