Read this and try not to laugh your ass off:
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Thursday rejected a White House offer to avoid the “fiscal cliff” that would include $1.6 trillion in tax increases, $400 billion in spending cuts and a more permanent increase in the debt ceiling, Republican aides said.
Aides said the offer was made by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Rob Nabors, a top White House adviser, during their meeting with Republican leaders in the Capitol.
While the Obama administration described the offer as reducing the deficit by $4 trillion over 10 years, Republicans told The Hill its tax increases amount to $600 billion more than what the Democratic-led Senate passed earlier this year when it approved legislation that would allow tax rates on top earners to rise.
“We’ve offered a balanced approach to deal with the fiscal cliff: raising revenue in a way that protects jobs while cutting spending,” said a Republican congressional aide familiar with the proposal. “But, after two weeks of discussions, the offer the White House made today is completely unbalanced and unreasonable, and amounts to little more than reiterating the president’s budget request — which failed to get a single vote in the House or Senate.”House Democrats backed the White House for putting forward an offer based on Obama’s 2013 budget.
House Budget Committee ranking member Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), emerging from a meeting with Geithner where leaders were briefed on the offer, said it is House GOP leaders who must now put forth their plan.
“The Republicans have made some nice, positive noises but they haven’t put a plan on the table,” Van Hollen added.
Republicans said the administration is demanding the $1.6 trillion in tax increases upfront, while the smaller amount of spending cuts would come later. The White House also wants $50 billion in new stimulus spending, according to published reports, and to make permanent a change in the way the debt ceiling is raised so that Congress can only block it with a two-thirds majority.
“This offer represents a complete break from reality,” the Republican aide said.
Au contraire, mon frère, that is precisely the “reality” that the Republicans are facing. The administration is threatening to weaken their ability to obstruct in the Senate or to blow up the economy by holding the debt ceiling hostage, while also demanding their tax hikes on the rich and refusing to offer anything remotely satisfactory (from the Republicans’ point of view) in spending cuts.
Give the president what he wants or over the cliff we go. And the GOP gets the blame no matter what happens. Maybe you shouldn’t have fucked with the president so much.
They can’t possibly think the Republicans would ever accept the plan. This looks to me like they want to go over the “cliff,” and make the Republicans take the blame.
Last time, remember, Obama said he wanted $1 trillion in tax increases, then upped it to $1.4 trillion when it looked like Boehner might take the deal. Now it’s $1.6 trillion.
Fun, isn’t it?
I love it. Screw the bastards.
It IS fun. Here in Maine our merry band of OFA team leaders are rallying our friends for the phone/visit/twiter/facebook lobbying campaign.
Yesterday I spoke with a woman who was looking forward to retirement after the election but realized that it made no sense to work 25 hours a week during the campaign only to stop when it came time to get our agenda passed. She is fired up!
I’m looking forward to seeing the rug-burns on Boehner’s forehead…
Republicans would be wise to subvert expectations, pass 98% of the Bush tax cuts in the House (already passed by the senate), assure the middle class that they’re secure, and then bail on Washington and tell the Prez they’ll see him in February to resolve the sequestration in parallel with the debt ceiling hike once they’ve denied him his extra tax leverage.
It’s over on the Bush tax cuts. The election is decided. As the old saying goes, the only way to win is not to play.
On the other news of the day, a hearty lol to the performance of the American media and especially the liberal blogosphere on their assiduous ducking of the UN vote. I’m sure the ‘bots will be quick to explain how the Nobel Peace Prize winner and Great Man of History Barack Obama is really just another Lincolnian pragmatist, downplaying his abolitionist sentiments in order to keep the border states within the fold (protecting Israel now so as to be able to deliver them to the table when it really matters), but the vote was a humiliating rebuke to the Likud government and an international vote of ‘no confidence’ in American mediation of the conflict. But hey, the US and Canada were able to keep Palau on board, so…uh, score. Palau.
You falsely assume that the administration is fond of its straight-jacket.
What straight jacket? They pretend to care about a Palestinian state. It wasn’t even like it was a vote to condemn Israel. Also, Likud, Labour, Kadima, they’re all the same.
Not that I’m necessarily in support of the vote anyway. Abbas has no credibility, and I don’t know what the Palestinian People wanted as far as this vote goes. But a state with no rights isn’t justice or peace.
Given the footage of people in Gaza (who generally hold Abbas in contempt) pouring into the streets to celebrate as news of the vote spread, I’d say they’re OK with it.
You’re right, the fact that they feel sorry for themselves is clearly the most important thing to keep in mind here. Excellent perspective, Booman…
So why is Rice playing patsy with every right-wing Jewish org there is? You did pay attention to who was running the most anti-Obama ads the last month before election, right?
You have seemingly no understanding of context or history or anything. It’s a wonder you’re able to turn on your computer.
Unlike Booman, I’m not going to carry water for our country’s foreign policy traditions just because I happen to approve of certain elected officials otherwise. We made our bed, and now we’re gonna lie in it. This is what “leading from behind” looks like, or at least that’s what they’ll have to convince people of after the fact. It’s an embarrassing state of affairs. I don’t grade on a curve.
You, Calvin, on the other hand, are just an ignorant loudmouth.
This is not leading from behind. This is being on the wrong side of history.
You’re only on the wrong side of history until you’re not. Our representatives will spend the rest of their lives swearing up and down that this vote was “all part of the plan” and the “long arc of history bending slowly.”
They’re total fucking cowards, but history has vindicated worse.
This is not leading from behind. This is being on the wrong side of history.
If they were actually on the wrong side, the State Department would have tried to twist arms among our allies to vote No.
Instead, they mouthed the ritual denunciations in public.
I think “sitting out” is a better metaphor than either “leading from behind” or “on the wrong side.”
This is late, but seriously dude, no.
They’re so far behind they are literally the last in line. We are the last* country on earth. Europe sat this one out. The administration sent its ambassador up there with a red rubber nose and a seltzer bottle after one of the most one-sided humiliations the US and its bestest ally have ever received on the international stage.
Could it be time to stop trying to be the “indispensable nation” and just let things go however they go, vis-a-vis the Israelo-Palestinian conflict?
Let it be somebody else’s turn to worry about it.
US out of everywhere but North America!
Hell yeah.
“elections have consequences.”
If the wingers want to jump off the cliff, I’ll happily cut the ropes.
Sounds like Obama found his testicles and is jamming them in Boehner’s face. Get on your knees, Mr. Speaker.
It’s not like Obama to simply have some fun by f*cking with Republican heads. It also hasn’t been his style to humiliate his opponent or to play public hardball in negotiations. So this isn’t a case of the “Kenyan” getting his revenge.
It is symptomatic of something much deeper. Obama spent his first term trying to put the brakes on the Reaganomic ship of state. For thirty years the Republican party and the economic and political elite having been moving steadily to the right. Even Obamacare is right wing ideology c. 2000. As time went by the winguits became mainstream to be replaced by even nuttier wingnuts…You couldn’t lose if you campaigned from the right…
It takes a long time to slow down and then turn around the ship of state.
But we may now be witnessing the turning point. Obama seems to be contemplating doing things he simply couldn’t get done in his first term (because of Democratic as well as Republican opposition): Close down Gitmo, A harder line on Israel, Increased taxes, increased state investment in infrastructure, education, healthcare and R&D, a turning away from ever increasing inequality, to at least some amelioration of that trend.
We’ll see how far he tries to go. But it may be that, for now at least, time is on his side. If Republicans don’t cede some ground now, they may have to cede more later. This is the most important sign of a changing tide: progress may seem infinitesimal for now, but in what direction are we now headed?
It is generally only possible to divine the changing of a historical tide some years after the event. Things that seem insignificant now can come to have been portents of a major change. It may be that all we are now seeing is some negotiating kabuki resulting in a deal which does little or nothing to address the fundamental drift of power from the political to the economic elite.
On the other hand, we may be seeing the start of something really significant. The promising sign is that the Obama people are showing at least some signs of chutzpah following their election despite the failure to recapture the house.
McConnell burst out laughing when Geithner presented his proposal. Then he was like, “Oh, wait. You’re serious.”
Throwing that plan down in Mitch’s lap like that, you’d have thought Geithner’s boss won an election, or something!!
Remember this?
He obviously missed this:
I give people the benefit of the doubt. I try and understand their point of view. If I perceive they are trying to take advantage of that, then……well, I crush them…..
(shit-faced grin)
That was just a joke….maybe…sort of, kind of.
And now we know. It’s not a joke.
Priceless. Absolutely priceless.
Stop, Oscar! You’re killing me, man!!
I’ll tell you what’s ringing in my ears. All the sneering and derisiveness I have heard for so long about “community organizing”. It is rich, Oscar. So fucking rich! I love it.
this thread made my day.
“I’m at my best as a counterpuncher. You come at me and I will knock you out.”
You know, he might yet severely disappoint me. That’s always a possibility. But right now, I’m as happy as a dog wallowing in deer scat.
It’s true. If you go back to the 2008 primary, all of his best moments came when he was hitting back.
The Philadelphia speech. “Just words.” “Annie Oakley.”
“Beware the fury of a patient man.”