A top House Republican predicted that President Barack Obama will lose public support for tax-rate increases if he doesn’t also propose spending cuts to achieve a budget deal with Congress.

Illinois Representative Peter Roskam, his party’s chief deputy whip, said House Republicans aren’t willing to raise tax rates because increasing them would hurt small businesses and job growth. They are still awaiting a serious proposal from Obama to cut spending, he said.

Speaking at a Bloomberg Government breakfast, Roskam said public-opinion polls showing support for Obama’s position in bargaining with Congress will “quickly turn” if “we don’t deal substantively with the spending side” of the equation.

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“It’s the zero-sum-game politic that concerns me,” Roskam said. “There is a Lucy and Charlie Brown feeling here with the football, and House Republicans are not willing to let Lucy pull the ball back.”

“The president has a lot of bandwidth,” Roskam said. “If he were to choose to go back to the themes of 2008” when he first campaigned for president, Obama can be “a transformational figure,” Roskam said.

“Or he can continue to play what I would characterize as small ball” and “litigate” tax increases “over and over again,” he said.

Republicans are receptive to the idea of “putting new revenues on the table,” Roskam said. Still, Obama hasn’t proposed “anything substantive” about cutting spending, he said.

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