WASHINGTON — On the eve of his trip today to New York City to push for Wall Street regulation, President Obama refused to rule out employing a European-style value-added tax to give the federal government enough money to pay debts.
“There’s been a lot of talk around town lately about the value-added tax. That is something that has worked for some countries,” Obama said in a CNBC interview.
It would be “novel” to introduce it in the United States, the president told CNBC’s John Harwood — but declined to say yet whether he supports or opposes the idea.
“Before, you know, I start saying, ‘This makes sense or that makes sense,’ I want to get a better picture of what our options are,” Obama said, referring to the commission he has empaneled to offer ideas on reducing the government’s massive debt.
The executive director of that panel also left open the likelihood of a VAT, a type of national sales tax assessed on every step of a product’s path to the market.
“We need to talk through all sides of this equation,” Bruce Reed told Fox News. “We intend to look at everything.”
The 18-member commission is led by former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, a Democrat, and former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson, a Republican.
In the interview ahead of today’s appearance at Cooper Union in Manhattan, Obama also “categorically” denied any involvement or prior knowledge of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s civil suit brought last week against Goldman Sachs. Many of his fellow Democrats have been quick to use the case as ammunition to ram through Congress an overhaul of financial regulation.
“We are not Johnny-come-latelies to this issue,” Obama said, noting that he has called for regulation reforms since before he took office.
And the SEC, he said, is an independent agency. “We found out about [the suit] on CNBC,” Obama told Harwood.
The president also was asked if he was embarrassed by the nearly $1 million he has collected in campaign donations from Goldman employees or the fact that his former White House counsel is now lobbying on the company’s behalf.
“No,” he said flatly. “I raised a lot of money from a lot of people.”
The president’s spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters yesterday he has not heard anyone inside the White House suggest that Obama should return any of the Goldman money.
Obama will visit the city today to deliver a speech on the importance of passing the Democratic financial-regulation reform bill that is currently moving through the Senate but has failed to attract a single Republican supporter.