CHICAGO, Oct. 9 (UPI) -- A top Republican budget hawk said he favored closing corporate tax loopholes and getting the federal government to stop "picking winners and losers."
"The more loopholes you get rid of, the lower the (corporate tax) rates you are," Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., said on NBC's "Meet the Press, which originated in Chicago. "We shouldn't be picking winners and losers in Washington either through spending or through the tax code."
Ryan is chairman of the U.S. House Budget Committee.
He said elimination of tax breaks for certain businesses would lower the overall corporate tax rate, which would do more to create jobs across the board, and predicted there would be bipartisan support in Washington for the concept.
Ryan said that while President Obama has been receptive to the idea of lowering corporate taxes, he questioned why tax reform was not part of the president's jobs bill, which he predicted would never get through Congress. "Why didn't he put ideas in the jobs bill that have a bipartisan support instead of putting all these failed ideas that have already proven not to work?" he asked.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, Obama's former chief of staff, took an opposite tack. He told NBC that the administration's aggressive aid to the auto industry and other struggling industries had headed off their collapse and put them and their scores of employees on track to recovery.
