In a letter sent to President Obama today, House Republican leaders made a new offer to avert the fiscal cliff centered around a middle ground approach first presented to Congress last year by President Clinton’s former White House chief of staff, Erskine Bowles. The Bowles plan, presented in 2011 to the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, is consistent with the framework House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) proposed the day after the election: a balanced approach of significant spending cuts and new revenues from tax reform with fewer loopholes and lower tax rates. This is another attempt to jumpstart substantive, good faith negotiations toward a bipartisan solution that can be enacted soon, a stark contrast to the unserious proposal the White House put forward last week.And the answer? No thank you:
White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer rejected Speaker of the House John Boehner's counter-proposal to avert the fiscal cliff in a statement to reporters Monday afternoon.Two things. First of all, what the hell is the "test of balance?" Second, how does it work when one side of a negotiation gets to determine that "balance" represents essentially getting whatever they want?
“The Republican letter released today does not meet the test of balance," Pfeiffer said. "In fact, it actually promises to lower rates for the wealthy and sticks the middle class with the bill. Their plan includes nothing new and provides no details on which deductions they would eliminate, which loopholes they will close or which Medicare savings they would achieve."
President Barack Obama has pledged to oppose any agreement that does not raise tax rates on the top two percent of wage-earners.
In other words, nothing happened yesterday. We'll check back if any news develops on this front. Not that we should expect any.
10 comments:
A not insignificant portion of our nation's leaders are children.
Mark,
Boehner has pledged to oppose any agreement that raises any tax rates. Obviously, one or both of those guys is going to be wrong. I could also note that the Simpson-Bowles plan was predicated on the notion that Clinton-Era tax rates would return for the top 10% if any real progress was going to take place toward balancing the budget.
I think you guys are missing the point: Neither side actually expects to get what they asked for in the last few days. This was positioning. Both sides have publicly staked there starting positions.
I actually think that some actual progress was made here.
Regards,
Rich
Yes, the president appears to be behaving as though he actually won an election, or something. The nerve.
I actually think that some actual progress was made here.
I don't. YMMV.
The nerve.
He behaves the same way win or lose. Doesn't matter one bit.
Bottom line is I'm not impressed with any of them right now.
Yes, Obama (sadly) won the election, but it's some amazing chutzpah where his people are calling his plan of twice his campaigned-for tax hikes and only 25% that amount in spending cuts "balanced."
My take here is that the GOP needs to come up with a big, long list where you can get to 2-3 trillion bucks in the next ten years simply from the money Obama's been (and Bush and Clinton before him) pouring down the porcelain god.
Let's start with cutting the Department of Energy. 40 years after it was created, it still hasn't produced any viable sources of energy. Savings; thirty billion dollars annually, 75% of the total cuts proposed by Obama.
Add PBS, NPR, NEA, NEH, tax breaks for wind power.......I think I've got him soundly beaten, and nothing of value has been cut.
I think Bubba has a good start there. Then lets kill all the lawyers. America will be back in black.
Looks like the right wing extremists in the Republican party continue to distill their "truth" serum down into more and more bitter and unpalatable bile. Soon enough only the most stomach hardened insanity-forged Republic-con will be able to swallow the vile syrup of their fantasy lunatic winner-take-all society. Poor Boehner has to sell this putrid brew to an ever more skeptical country, even after the nation said to him, "No thanks. We've tried your snake oil and it made us hurl." If Boehner's party chooses to send their unpopular stale ideas to the WH, then I say, fine, go over the cliff, then we'll see who the American people thinks caused their payroll taxes to go up Jan. 2. I'll bet dollars to donuts it'll be the Rs.
If Boehner's party chooses to send their unpopular stale ideas to the WH, then I say, fine, go over the cliff, then we'll see who the American people thinks caused their payroll taxes to go up Jan. 2. I'll bet dollars to donuts it'll be the Rs.
Well, of course. They'll be blamed no matter what happens. If they give the D's what they want, when things go south they'll be blamed for that, too. It's axiomatic that the R's are responsible, because they just are, because their ideas are "unpopular" and "stale" and "not balanced."
It's good to control the terms of the debate.
Post a Comment