“Just say everything stays the same for another three months, six months because early next year it will be apparent that doing harm to this economy is not going to be a smart thing to do,” Forbes said in an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV. “The president hopes to ram this through before the shakiness of the economy becomes evident to the voters.”
Forbes, who is chairman, and editor in chief of Forbes Media, has a new book, “The Freedom Manifesto,” and is the best-selling author of “The Flat Tax Revolution: How Capitalism Will Save Us.”
Watch our exclusive interview. Story continues below.
“If the stopgap short term fix is simply kicking the can down the road that would be a good thing,” Forbes said. “Don’t do anything right now because that would involve increasing taxes, which is the last thing this wobbly economy needs.”
He noted that southern Europe has been raising taxes but their economies are getting worse.
“Britain and France and Germany are about to go into recession,” said Forbes. “Japan’s already in a recession. We’re weakening. Why in the world would we want to pile new taxes on a shaky economy?”
He admitted that if lawmakers postpone a decision on the fiscal cliff, Republicans will take some of the blame. However, he pointed out Obama, as president, “clearly didn’t have the leadership skills to prevent this from happening.”
Meanwhile, Forbes, who ran for the Republican nomination for the White House in 1996 and again in 2000, said Republicans should be passing a series of new bills to resolve the financial woes.
“How about a bill saying that no reform of Medicare and Social Security can involve reducing benefits for people who are on the system today, or those about to go on the system?” said Forbes.
“How about passing another bill: No money can be raided from Medicare for Obamacare? I’d love to see Harry Reid block that one.
"Or about another one? The president keeps raising the debt ceiling issue. Well, how about a bill mandating that the non-marketable securities in the Social Security trust funds, which are just Treasury IOUs, be replaced with marketable treasury bonds so if you get an impasse on the debt ceiling, everyone knows those payments can continue to be made because Social Security will have cash instead of these junk bonds that they hold today?”
In Forbes Magazine, Forbes speaks about Obama’s plans for revenge against the rich. He said in the Newsmax interview that there are several examples of how Obama wants to fight rich people.
“Just the fact that he’s like Ahab and the whale, he is just obsessed with this thing of hitting the rich one way or the other. And the idea that he defines it as $250,000 shows that he’s got a pretty low bar for rich,” he said. “The real rich who have the billions, they’re insulated. The people who are living on their incomes, they’re the ones who are going to get hit hardest by this.”
He also said Republican lawmakers should concentrate on how to get the economy growing again, and “define the issues in a way that Ronald Reagan would have done it and public opinion will shift on this.”
Meanwhile, Forbes said Republicans need to go on the offensive and swing public opinion, instead of letting “those who want to control our lives” dominate the debate.
He said the most damaging tax increase is in capital gains, which have gone from 15-24 percent, but income taxes and Obamacare fees will also slam small businesses.
Forbes admitted there might be a market correction, like in 2011. “If the worst happens, one of the things that happens is that $60 billion or so comes out of defense spending,” he said. “Don’t you think the Chinese and the Russians are watching this slashing the Navy?”
Forbes also addressed Obama’s re-election, saying it says less about voters, than about the fact that the Republican Party made an unconvincing case to the American people.
“Give the president credit,” he said. “They had a great ground game and they trashed [Mitt Romney] into the ground, to which his campaign did not respond. But he should not have won that election, given the state of the economy today. It’s not enough to criticize the incumbent. You have to have a positive agenda to go against him.”
Romney had good points, he said, “but they always seemed to come as an afterthought.”
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