"Obama wants the nation to go over the fiscal cliff because it will raise everyone’s taxes — then he can be seen as saving the middle class by lowering their taxes in the new year..."

◼ Longtime Sen. Chuck Grassley tells Newsmax that Republicans have a “great deal of leverage” on President Obama because they can refuse to raise the debt ceiling unless he agrees to spending cuts. - Jim Meyers and Kathleen Walter/Newsmax

Grassley was first elected to the Senate in 1980. He is member of the Budget and Finance committees and the former chairman of the Finance Committee.

In an exclusive interview with Newsmax TV, Grassley addresses claims by some Republicans that President Obama wants the nation to go over the fiscal cliff and let the Bush-era tax cuts expire.

“He hasn’t shown any leadership because he doesn’t know how to compromise. He does want us to go over the cliff because he’s holding all the cards. He’s got nothing to lose. You go over the cliff, everybody’s taxes are going to go up, particularly the two percent where he wanted the rates to go up.

“Then he’ll come back after the first of the year, suggest for people under $250,000 to actually decrease their taxes, so he not only [gets] a tax increase on the wealthy, but he’s going to end up being a person that saves the middle class because going over the cliff raises taxes on everybody.

“He’s in a position where he gets everything and he can still lower taxes for the middle class after the first of the year. Maybe they’ve only been going up for a couple of weeks or maybe a month, but eventually, we’re going to not raise taxes on the middle class.

“The sad commentary is if we had proper presidential leadership, we wouldn’t have to be even talking about this. This president has not wanted to sit down and work hard in negotiating like previous Democratic presidents, like President Clinton who was willing to sit down with Speaker [Newt] Gingrich and work compromises.”

Considering that the president refuses to back down on raising taxes on America’s highest-income earners, Grassley was asked, what other options do Republicans have?

“If we do go over the cliff then the focus next year’s going to be on raising the debt ceiling and we’ve got a great deal of leverage on the president on raising the debt ceiling because we don’t have to raise it unless we’re going to get some reduction in expenditures.

“The proposition that was established in August of 2011 is a pretty good proposition that Republicans are willing to follow now — for every dollar increase in the debt ceiling, we’re going to have to have a dollar decrease in expenditures....”

“Grover Norquist and his organization do a tremendous job because he’s constantly reminding the people in Congress, and also the grassroots of America, that we don’t have a taxing problem, we’ve got a spending problem. You can raise all of the taxes the Democrats want to raise but you’re not going to get us out of this deficit situation. If you’re going to get out of the deficit situation, you’ve got to tackle the spending side of the ledger.”