Adelson: GOP Should Accept Tax Increases to Avoid Fiscal Cliff

Casino/hotel magnate Sheldon Adelson says Republican congressmen should  accept a tax increase to solve the fiscal cliff.

“I’m a citizen first and a partisan second,” Adelson, who provided more than $100 million to Republican candidates during the last election cycle, writes on Politico. That sum likely makes him the largest single donor ever.

“I am urging the Congress and President Obama to reach a solution to the impending fiscal cliff crisis,” Adelson says. “That means compromising on some combination of tax increases and spending cuts.”

Extremists on both sides are making agreement difficult, Adelson says.

“Some of these partisans were directly responsible for the House’s failure to act [on proposals for tax hikes and spending cuts] – a failure that has for the moment created chaos in the markets and the inside-the-Beltway negotiating process. Now is the time for us all to push away from the extremes and find common ground.”

The stakes are huge, Adelson says. “If Washington fails to resolve this, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the policies scheduled to go into effect would cut gross domestic product by 4 percentage points in 2013, sending the economy into a recession with substantial job losses.”