Here’s the thoroughly dishonest Conn Carroll’s fairly accurate depiction of Tim Geithner’s proposal to the Republican leadership:
1. An immediate $1 trillion tax hike through higher top marginal income tax rates as well as higher taxes on both capital gains and dividends.
2. An agreement to raise $600 billion more in taxes later this year by limiting tax deductions for top earners.
3. $50 billion in new infrastructure stimulus spending.
4. Another “emergency” extension of unemployment benefits.
5. An extension of either the payroll tax cut or the reinstatement of Obama’s stimulus Making Work Pay tax credit.
6. A mortgage refinancing program.
7. Billions in new spending to prevent cuts to Medicare reimbursement payments for doctors.
8. An infinite debt limit hike.
Mr. Carroll says that the Republicans should respond by simply giving up on any pretense of trying to avoid the fiscal cliff. They should just go home, enjoy the holidays, and wait for the Obama administration to grow up. Charles Krauthammer basically concurs, comparing Geithner’s terms to General Grant’s at Appomattox. Of course, General Lee didn’t have the option of walking away at Appomattox. Much like Mitt Romney and the Republicans, General Lee and his Confederate Army were defeated.
It doesn’t sound like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell plans on following Carroll and Krauthammer’s advice, however. He wants to lock in cuts to entitlements.
On spending cuts, [McConnell] called changes in entitlement eligibility — things like increases in the retirement age, changes in the CPI, means-testing in Medicare — “the most important thing that could be achieved.” He believes those are “the only credible spending reductions” because levels of discretionary spending are set every year…
…Are the entitlement-eligibility changes his price for any deal? “There’s a nexus,” he says, “between my willingness to raise revenue and their willingness to make serious entitlement-eligibility reforms.” Does he worry that Republicans will be attacked for refusing to raise taxes on the rich without entitlement cuts? “They’ve talked about our reluctance to raise taxes on high-income people incessantly for a generation.” The main point is that he wants to lock in entitlement changes right away. He wants to “do something other than set up some process where we promise to do something later and it doesn’t happen.” He worries setting up another commission to debate entitlements will give the “AARP and the unions a whole year to beat everybody up so we don’t ever get an outcome.” He emphasizes, “We ought to do it now, right now.”
So, McConnell should probably start a tour of the country so he can take his case for raising the eligibility age of Social Security and Medicare to the people. While he’s at it, he can explain how “changes in CPI” means smaller Social Security checks for everyone.
It’s time for the Republicans to sell their plan to the people. They might like it better than gonorrhea!!
McConnell had an observation about filibuster reform, too.
On the possibility of ending the filibuster, he says, “Harry Reid trying to throw a bomb into the Senate chamber is a curious way to try to set the stage for bringing both sides together to do something important for the country.” He thinks Democrats are “feeling their oats. They just can’t turn off the celebration.” He calls the potential filibuster gambit “breaking the rules to change the rules.” It is “a truly, truly radical thing,” and “not only is it stupid, it’s inflammatory.”
No one is talking about “ending” the filibuster. But McConnell is right that the Democrats are feeling their oats.
The GOP is up a creek without a paddle.
Everything on this list directly aids the middle class and requires some (small) “sacrifice” on the part of our monstrous class of plutocrats. Hopefully this is how it will be sold by Dems.
Mitch’s “price”. First of all, isn’t this fiscal “cliff” legislation 100% budget legislation and hence not subject to Mitch’s Filibuster(s)?
Second, who in God’s name thinks that this worthless lame duck Congress should be making major policy (i.e eligibility) decisions affecting future reforms to Medicare? They had two years to legislate actual reform, it was the last thing on their minds.
Also, fix the title of your post to “oats”.
thanks for the tip on the headline.
You are not understanding the way budget reconciliation works. Reconciliation is a process that is initiated by a Budget Resolution. What can and cannot be included in the reconciliation is laid out by the Byrd Rule, but you can’t just do reconciliation because you are changing the net revenues of the government. Specific committees are charged with following budgetary guidelines and with bringing their budgets into compliance with their instructions. If the Senate doesn’t even pass a budget, there are no instructions and therefore nothing to be reconciled to those instructions.
OK, thanks for this explanation.
Filibuster away, Mitch!
The GOP is up a creek without a paddle.
……..with a boat load of buffoons.
If the GOper primary season was any indication,
Wile E. Coyote survived the fall when he ran headlong off the skewed polling cliff and now clinging to a log and frantically paddling as he hears the sound of the falls that crash down Fiscal Cliff get louder and louder.
There really is only one thing that Obama as a practical matter has to get done before the end of the year–the middle class tax cut. But given the current narrative, the President really can politically benefit if that doesn’t happen.
The Republicans just discovered that the President’s hand is better than their three of a kind.
Doesn’t need it by the end of the year. By late January the Republicans will be begging for it= and retro-active.
They have a paddle, well, they have the handle.
It’s more like even if they did have a paddle the creek has dried up and they need to get out of the canoe. But they’re beating on the creek bed with their paddles and shouting at the empty woods around them.
I’m loving it. Suck it, goopers.
I’m looking forward to going over the cliff. Then, I’m looking forward to a new tax cut proposal from Obama that’s even more favorable to the 99% than the sub-$250,000 parts of the Bush cuts (e.g. deduction limits for the wealthy used to fund further rate cuts for everybody else). Then watch the Republicans squeal as they try just to get back just to the sub-$250,000 parts of the Bush plan. They’ll be pushing changes overwhelmingly unpopular and with the Bush label. It will be great politics.
He’s right. Or they could go with Tom Coles’ prescription, which is also adequate. Under no circumstances should they attempt to deal in this year. It has never gone well for them. Obama is a chiseler and a sharp, and they’re the dumb money who has been taken every time. The only way to win is not to play.
Deadlines are poison pills. Blow everything up and deal with it all in 2013, when there’s no ticking clock. Every executive we’ve ever had coming off a modest electoral win has attempted to reform the government through authoritarian fiat, and every time the Congress has endured. We sank Bush’s attempt to privatize social security. The House is under zero obligation to raise one red cent of new taxes beyond that which is already preexisting law.
The President is a statist, redistributionist, European-style liberal who is in complete opposition to compromising with Republican orthodoxy. He will not cut Medicare or Medicaid benefits. He has dramatically expanded them. And paid for those expansions through taxes on the wealthy and substantial reductions in corporate welfare. He will not raise revenues broadly. He has cut taxes on the middle and lower classes (unless you’re a smoker), and will keep them at historical lows. He seeks to raise taxes exclusively on the wealthy, and dramatically on capital gains and “unearned” income. This will not be the last time in the next four years he tries to do so. It is the implicit policy of the Democratic Party to raise tens of trillions of dollars of new taxes in the next few decades to catch up with European norms.
That’s his record, that’s who he is. And if you’re a Republican in opposition to his ideology and economic worldview, you cannot deal with him. Nor us with them.
Since he’s never raised taxes ever, it’s a bit early to say his record shows tax increases only on the wealthy.
Since that statement could have come verbatim from Fox, it’s hard to know how to interpret your intent. Since the president has already been complicit in massive redistribution of wealth to the 1%, in the accountability free real estate bubble and in agreeing to renew the Bush rates for the 1%, your statement is also grossly inaccurate.
the president has zero responsibility for the housing bubble. As for lack of accountability, that has nothing to do with redistribution of wealth.
The health care subsidies and Medicaid expansion are huge redistributors.
The extension of the Bush tax cuts was for two years, and that only kept preexisting rates.
I’m just saying, contra Bazooka, that the president is very far from being some kind of militant warrior on the 1%. He’s surrounded by the 1%, they’re everywhere he works.
We’ve had this conversation before on this site. Y’all need to stop running from labels that accurately describe the President and his party and his policies.
He intends to make our government’s balance sheet look like Denmark’s. Or Norway’s. Or the Netherlands, etc. He is attempting to do so in a mixed-race, historically segregated, bifurcated society, which is a massive and difficult political project, but policywise it’s pretty clear what he’s about.
You are a social democrat who believes in a mixed economy and redistribution. Own it.
Please name me one politician who does not believe in redistribution. All the Republicans do.
The clock won’t stop ticking when the ball falls in Times Square. It will become a loud alarm. Everyone will be calling Congress wanting to know when they are going to get their tax cuts back, why they’ve been furloughed, when or whether their contract will be honored, when their unemployment check is coming, etc.
The Defense industry will rip the GOP to shreds.
Yeah, go off the cliff, Republicans. Things will go so much better for you that way.
Yeah, but you’re wrong. There’s no acute fiscal cliff. There’s no drop-dead date Jan. 1, spending-wise. We’re smack dab in the middle of a fiscal year. The money’s already been appropriated. Nobody is gonna be furloughed right away, none of that. It’s not like a government shut down.
The only thing that happens right away is tax changes. The GOP can simply wait through December, pass something on Jan. 5 or whatever, and no one would ever know the difference. They have to eliminate the President’s leverage. Look at that list Carroll wrote! 1. is a lost cause, they have to give that up without a fight. But on 2-8, they need to tell the White House and Democrats to go suck a dick. If they deal with him, he will inevitably get some of that stuff on that list, and there is no earthly reason to give it up to him for free. We can only hope they are hubristic enough to stay at the table. Everything screams they shouldn’t.
Forbes has a more accurate assessment of the situation.
That’s not a more accurate assessment, you and curtadams are nuts. You’re completely writing out any agency congress has in the matter. Once the date is passed it’s like, oh well, I guess we’ll never pass anything ever again. Shucks. Into Hell, we go.
Whatever Congress passed, it can unpass. The very first things they can do in 2013 are the Protecting American Security Act and the We Love Medical Providers Act, remedying the sequester before anything happens. And what, the White House is going to veto and demand new stimulus spending and even higher taxes than the $800B campaign promise? The Senate is gonna refuse to take it up? No, the situation reverses itself.
The markets are perfectly capable of enforcing discipline in their own fashion, they did in Oct. 08 and the European bond ratchet last spring. But it’s a choice. They’re trying to intimidate Democrats right now. When they fail, they will clam up, not turn on their natural allies to hand the President a hyperliberal victory. The end of December is half trading holidays anyway.
Any time something HAS to pass, the Democrats have the upper hand. The exception is the debt ceiling but that hits the government itself, not defense contractors and medical providers and farmers and other parts of the Republicans’ core constituency.
Markets aren’t agents and they don’t make choices. Things happen in markets as a result of pressures on the agents participating in them. The current situation is that the wealthy have more money to invest than opportunities to invest it and as a result interest rates will remain very low, especially government bonds. The stock market may bounce around but that has minimal political consequence – otherwise the Dems would have had a miracle victory in 2010 from the stock market boom under Obama.
For the economy as a whole, the “cliff” is just a mild slope. But for a defense contractor, it is a cliff. Their income drops 9% when the ball comes down and they have to start layoffs and business trip cutbacks right away. So yes, they’re going to scream and since Obama’s proposal gets them off the hook the Republicans will take that heat.
MSM is trying to put this all in Obama’s lap. I’d like a Dem to step up and tell the reporters to ask the Repubs for a definitive tax plan. They don’t want to because it would basically reveal the big economic lie that they’ve been spouting for the last thirty years.
If I were running the Dems I’d have a bunch of bills lined up like storms over the Pacific, each one taxing the rich a little more. Top tax rate 39% when the Bush cuts expire? Let’s make it an even 40%. Eventually, Boehner won’t be able to make non-specific insults of Dem proposals. He should be forced to explain where the money’s coming from, and when he does that the 99% will see that the Republicans take from us to make the rich insufferably more rich.
I’m not sure they are really screwed. They are pretty safe in their seats. Donors will always give to them. They don’t need to actually govern. In fact they would prefer not to and just be a general pain in the ass.
Mortgage refinancing is critical to getting out of the Great Recession and avoiding twenty years of Japanese style malaise. The banks should badger the R’s for it. Financed by FNMA, of course.