http://www.businessinsider.com/gop-defectors-sign-letter-on-compromising-on-the-fiscal-cliff-2012-12
( I think this letter was leaked early , which would explain the rocket shot in the Dow from lows of the day around 11am on " no known news " ... note the big spike occurred well before when the letter was officially released and first media coverage occurred about 12:30pm... . )
Bloomberg's Heidi Przybyla is reporting that a group of about 40 Republican "defectors" have joined about 40 Democrats in calling for a compromise deal to avoid the fiscal cliff.
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/12/05/huh-thats-odd-harry-reid-declines-to-bring-a-vote-on-obamas-cliff-plan/
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/12/05/tapper-to-carney-back-to-hostage-again-eh-champ/
and.....
http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/12/05/mcconnell-gambit-on-senate-floor-highlights-democratic-resistance-to-some-tax-hikes-on-the-wealthy/
Some skullduggery on the Senate floor today.
If I can piece together what happened, Mitch McConnell up and requested unanimous consent for an immediate vote on the Geithner plan – the initial offer that the White House made to avert the fiscal slope. And Harry Reid, calling it a “stunt,” objected to the UC request.
Now why would he do that? The Geithner plan was pretty much universally lauded by Democrats as the best offer in the context of deficit reduction. It includes near-term stimulus and raises most of its funds from tax increases that target the wealthy. It also abolishes the debt limit, effectively. What’s not to like?
Well, for a handful of Democrats, those taxes on the rich, of course. They were willing to go along with an increase to the top two tax rates. But they don’t like all the specifics of the deduction limits and loophole closures in the other half of the deal. In particular, the Geithner plan would take a middle ground on the estate tax, bringing it back to a $3.5 million exemption and a 45% tax rate. Max Baucus has said publicly that he prefers the estate tax get fixed at 2009 levels, with the $5 million exemption and the 35% tax rate. This is why Democrats didn’t include anything on the estate tax in their Senate tax bill, because they didn’t have a unified position in the caucus.
and....
http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-congress/2012/12/christie-coming-to-dc-on-sandy-mission-150966.html?hp=r5
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 12/03/2012 16:32 -0500
( I think this letter was leaked early , which would explain the rocket shot in the Dow from lows of the day around 11am on " no known news " ... note the big spike occurred well before when the letter was officially released and first media coverage occurred about 12:30pm... . )
Republican 'Defectors' Sign Letter Endorsing Compromise On The Fiscal Cliff
Getty Images
The group is circulating a letter that calls for putting "all options" — including increasing tax rates and cutting entitlement programs — on the table.
Per Bloomberg:
One of the petition leaders, Representative Mike Simpson of Idaho, says he could accept higher rates for married couples earning more than $500,000 a year, in exchange for an overhaul of spending on entitlements such as Medicare.
Separately, Representative Kay Granger of Texas is endorsing Oklahoma Republican Tom Cole’s call to extend all tax cuts for middle-class earners as “just the right thing to do.”
What unifies these lawmakers is a recognition that Obama’s re-election has strengthened his hand in negotiations aimed at averting more than $600 billion in automatic tax increases and spending cuts set to take effect in January. The letter’s approximately 80 signers are half-Republican, half-Democratic, according to Simpson spokeswoman Nikki Watts.
For Republicans, the letter represents a significant break from the GOP House leadership's position that any revenue increases will have to come from eliminating tax deductions and loopholes, not increasing marginal tax rates. Even that position has met resistance from more conservative Republicans, who don't want any new revenue included in a deal.
Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-OH) told Bloomberg that House Speaker John Boehner could get 218 votes needed to pass a tax increase on the wealthy if about 120 House Democrats agree to entitlement cuts, such as raising the eligibility age for Medicare.
UPDATE, 5:59 p.m.:
Watts, the spokesperson for Rep. Simpson, sent over a copy of the letter, which is signed by two Democratic representatives and two Republicans. The names of the other signatories are not included.
Here's the letter:
Huh, that’s odd: Harry Reid declines to bring a vote on Obama’s cliff plan
POSTED AT 6:51 PM ON DECEMBER 5, 2012 BY ERIKA JOHNSEN
On the Senate floor on Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell offered to give Democrats a chance to go on the record and demonstrate just how serious they are about averting the fiscal cliff by proposing a vote on the package that President Obama proposed last week. Take it away, McConnell:
If the President’s proposal was made in good faith, Democrats should be eager to vote for it. So I’m surprised the Majority Leader just declined the chance for them to support it with their votes. I guess we’re left to conclude that it couldn’t even pass by a bare majority of votes, and that they’d rather take the country off the cliff than actually work out a good-faith agreement that reflects tough choices on both sides. … I think folks should know who actually wants to raise taxes on family farmers and manufacturers, and who thinks we can solve our fiscal problems without doing anything serious to our real long term liabilities.Democrats are so focused on the politics of this debate they seem to forget there’s a cost. They’re feeling so good about the election, they’ve forgotten they’ve got a duty to govern. A lot of people are going to suffer a lot if we go off this cliff. That’s why we assumed Democrats wanted to avoid it. We thought it was the perfect opportunity to do something together. Apparently we were wrong.And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s response to this reasonable request? How dare these Republicans ask us to vote on a bill carefully designed and touted by our party leader — it’s a stunt, I say! A stunt!“I reserve the right to object. I just a minute ago moved to the Russia trade bill,” said Reid. “The purpose of moving to this bill is to protect American jobs. If we don’t do this legislation, we’ll lose American jobs for sure and put American companies in even worse shape than they are with Chinese and European companies. So the question is really this: are we going to get serious here and legislate or is this more of the obstruction we felt so much during this last Congress?“The answer to that is really obvious. The answer is yes. Or are we going to continue the sort of political stunts that the Republican Leader is trying to pull today, now?”Okay, sure: Let’s go ahead and accept Mr. Reid’s language that this is a Republican “stunt,” but it being a “stunt” isn’t why Mr. Reid objects to it — the real problem is that a vote on President Obama’s plan would expose exactly what’s really going on here. The White House insists that President Obama’s plan — to hike up all kinds of taxes and virtually eliminate the debt ceiling — is a substantive, credible, good-faith proposal, yet plenty of Democrats are conspicuously hanging back from endorsing it. Could it be that the White House really doesn’t care about compromise, avoiding the pain of the fiscal cliff, or reducing the deficit, but is actually just single-mindedly committed to their entirely reckless goal of merely hiking taxes on the wealthiest Americans — a plan that even most Congressional Democrats wouldn’t vote for?…Oh, hey, check that out — they just admitted as much.;
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/12/05/tapper-to-carney-back-to-hostage-again-eh-champ/
Tapper to Carney: Back to “hostage” again, eh, champ?
POSTED AT 6:01 PM ON DECEMBER 5, 2012 BY DUSTIN SIGGINS
In 2011, the Republican Party – and especially the conservative/Tea Party wing – was accused of holding the country “hostage” over the debt ceiling debate. In yesterday’s White House briefing, Press Secretary Jay Carney decided to bring the term back into style, using it twice when answering questions on the debt ceiling. Here is the second one:
Q: Jay, speaking of the debt ceiling, does an agreement to raise the debt ceiling have to be part of an agreement to avert the fiscal cliff?CARNEY: We’re not going to negotiate over what is a fundamental responsibility of Congress, which is to pay the bills that Congress incurred. It should be part of the deal. It should be done and it should be done without drama.We cannot allow our economy to be held hostage again to the whims of an ideological agenda. We are the United States of America. We are the greatest economy on Earth. We pay our bills. We always have. If Congress wants to reduce spending, that should be part of the negotiations that go into making decisions about how we spend — the programs we spend money on.
Fortunately, ABC’s Jake Tapper didn’t let Carney get away with it:
Q: Just a second ago, you referred to, when talking about the debt ceiling, taking it off the table needs to be part of the deal. You referred to the economy being held hostage by an ideological view. You’re aware that when he was a senator, President Obama voted against raising it.CARNEY: We addressed that and there was no threat of default at the time. What happened in 2011 — as we all know, because we all lived it, most of us in this room — was the threat of default, a willingness expressed on the record and publicly by numerous members of Congress to see the American economy under default and with all the consequent impacts on the global economy and on the American middle class in order to achieve some sort of political victory that was driven by ideology and partisanship.Q: So it’s okay for people to engage in that kind of nonsense if it’s –CARNEY: Jake, I appreciate the question, and we engaged in this a lot at the time and I refer you to my comments about it back then. But the fact that –Q — people voting the way that Senator Obama did and except you’re using derisive terms –CARNEY: What happened in 2011 is that Republicans in Congress demanded — said they would let America default for the first time in its history if they did not get the items on their agenda. That was consequential and it was unprecedented, and the result was bad for everyone.So, in the last few days, we’ve gone from the President putting forth an unreasonable plan and taking a vacation to his Press Secretary saying principled disagreement is equivalent to hostage-taking, but only if that principled opposition doesn’t actually impact the country. Gotcha.But now the question arises: Who is really taking the country hostage? I answered that question the other day at the Tea Party Patriots’ blog:Since the start of the Tea Party Movement, politicians in both parties have found it convenient to blame [the Tea Party] whenever the Beltway Bubble is pierced. This hit something of a climax last year, when Tea Party-minded Members of Congress held strong against a no-frills debt ceiling increase. If you’ll remember, the word “hostage” was thrown about.Well, now principled opposition to increased taxes is being used by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to say the coming fiscal cliff won’t be avoided. In other words, Rep. Pelosi is holding the middle-class hostage on tax increases in order to eke out a little more from the wealthy.Between them, Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi are holding the country hostage over increasing taxes on the rich to cover less than 2% of projected spending over the next decade. Isn’t that the definition of “an ideological agenda,” especially when the nation has at least $61 trillion in long-term debts, liabilities, and obligations, and the President’s “plan” to deal with this problem is to essentially ignore it?As Ed noted earlier today, it’s certainly becoming possible that the GOP is waiting to use the debt ceiling as its major negotiating point on tax reform and entitlement reform. I’m not holding out hope – trusting the House leadership to actually push for conservative policies hasn’t exactly led to successful outcomes in the last two years – but it’s possible. In which case, we can expect to see Carney and Co. pulling “hostage” out of retirement once again.
and.....
http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/12/05/mcconnell-gambit-on-senate-floor-highlights-democratic-resistance-to-some-tax-hikes-on-the-wealthy/
McConnell Gambit on Senate Floor Highlights Democratic Resistance to Some Tax Hikes on the Wealthy | |
| By: David Dayen Wednesday December 5, 2012 1:06 pm | |
Tweet
Mitch McConnell requested unanimous consent for an immediate vote on the Geithner plan
Some skullduggery on the Senate floor today.
If I can piece together what happened, Mitch McConnell up and requested unanimous consent for an immediate vote on the Geithner plan – the initial offer that the White House made to avert the fiscal slope. And Harry Reid, calling it a “stunt,” objected to the UC request.
Now why would he do that? The Geithner plan was pretty much universally lauded by Democrats as the best offer in the context of deficit reduction. It includes near-term stimulus and raises most of its funds from tax increases that target the wealthy. It also abolishes the debt limit, effectively. What’s not to like?
Well, for a handful of Democrats, those taxes on the rich, of course. They were willing to go along with an increase to the top two tax rates. But they don’t like all the specifics of the deduction limits and loophole closures in the other half of the deal. In particular, the Geithner plan would take a middle ground on the estate tax, bringing it back to a $3.5 million exemption and a 45% tax rate. Max Baucus has said publicly that he prefers the estate tax get fixed at 2009 levels, with the $5 million exemption and the 35% tax rate. This is why Democrats didn’t include anything on the estate tax in their Senate tax bill, because they didn’t have a unified position in the caucus.
So Baucus, and several other ConservaDems, probably WOULD NOT VOTE FOR the Geithner plan, particularly over these issues of raising additional taxes on the rich. At any rate, they don’t want to take that vote, particularly because there’s no way the House would pass it, and it would involve Baucus et al walking the plank for no good reason. I personally think it’s a good reason to say that we don’t want an landed gentry in this country, but their mileage clearly varies.
In other words, for all the talk of the dysfunctional Republican caucus, it shouldn’t be forgotten that Democrats aren’t universally sweetness and light either.
In other words, for all the talk of the dysfunctional Republican caucus, it shouldn’t be forgotten that Democrats aren’t universally sweetness and light either.
and....
http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-congress/2012/12/christie-coming-to-dc-on-sandy-mission-150966.html?hp=r5
Christie coming to D.C. on Sandy mission
First, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo came to Washington to press Congress for Sandy relief money. Next up is New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
The Republican governor will head down the Eastern Seaboard on Thursday to meet with key officials on aid, Cuomo told reporters on Monday following his tour of key Hill offices as he emphasized how badly the Empire State needed federal aid to recover from the storm.
“These are staggering numbers for New York … we need help on this,” Cuomo said. “These are big, big numbers, even for New York and this is a very widespread scope of damage.”
The governors’ lobbying effort comes as the White House is preparing to send Congress an additional budget request to cover the costs of the storm recovery and response. Cuomo told reporters that the administration expects to send Capitol Hill the aid request by the end of this week.
The additional aid requested in the wake of one of the most expensive storms in history is sure to complicate what is already a packed lame-duck session centered mostly on avoiding the fiscal cliff. Congressional Republicans have in the past insisted on offsetting storm aid with cuts elsewhere in the federal budget.
But Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said his state had supported other disaster-wracked states in the past – such as when tornadoes hit Missouri or when hurricanes damaged the Gulf Coast – and warned Capitol Hill against setting a standard that called for offsetting storm aid.
“Our colleagues are aware that if they are not fair to New York, New Jersey and the Northeast, if disaster hits their area next time and they set a precedent that there need to be offsets … that that could boomerang on them,” Schumer told reporters.
Asked whether he got a commitment from Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on offsets, Cuomo said his conversations with him did not get that specific. Still, the New York governor said he was “optimistic” following his conversation with Boehner on Monday, and said Boehner promised to go through the White House budget request “on an expedited basis” once he received it from the White House.
Boehner also said he wants to take up Sandy aid before the end of this calendar year, according to the governor.
“He wants to be supportive, he wants to be helpful,” Cuomo said. “He understands the damage that was done. He was personally familiar with a lot of the areas that were damaged from his visits to New York."
Cuomo has requested $42 billion from Congress in aid for his state.
In his trip to Washington Monday, Cuomo met with Boehner, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Sens. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) and Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), the leaders of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-12-03/total-us-debt-hits-1636954879960493-debt-ceiling-just-63-billion-away
Total US Debt Hits $16,369,548,799,604.93; Debt Ceiling Just $63 Billion Away
And so the US debt ceiling of $16.394 trillion is now just $63 billion away.
Furthermore, once Thursday's Bill auctionadds another $26 billion in net debt, the ceiling will be a tiny $40 billion off, or just one week's worth of net debt issuance away, which is why the Treasury just warned the debt ceiling will be breached in a few weeks. At that point, just like in August 2011, the Treasury will have no choice but to start raiding the G-fund, and other sundry government retirement funds, until such time in February or latest March, when the debt ceiling debate, and hike, can be no longer postponed.
Most importantly, since the debt ceiling is still in place, all wishes by Timmy G and other believes in Magic Money Trees notwithstanding, this is the one true deadline to get a joint Fiscal Cliff-cum-debt ceilingdeal done. Which also means that despite all hopes to the contrary, it is now a virtual certainty that the US will enter 2013 without a Fiscal deal done, and will delay until the last possible moment, when America will have to once again add $2-3, maybe more, trillion to its debt ceiling, probably taking it as high as $21 trillion, which is where it will be by the time America will be preparing to usher in the next Wall Street pawn also known in polite circles as "president."
Below is a chart of US debt/GDP under the current adnimistration:
and....
https://www.fms.treas.gov/fmsweb/viewDTSFiles?dir=w&fname=12113000.txt
TABLE III-C Debt Subject to Limit
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Opening balance
Closing ______________________________________
Balance Transactions balance This This
today Today month fiscal
year
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Debt Held by the Public $ 11,553,201 $ 11,493,263 $ 11,411,598 $ 11,269,586
Intragovernmental Holdings 4,816,348 4,829,821 4,849,872 4,796,656
Total Public Debt
Outstanding 16,369,549 16,323,083 16,261,471 16,066,241
Less: Debt Not
Subject to Limit:
Other Debt 486 486 486 486
Unamortized Discount 30,562 31,004 31,144 31,130
Federal Financing Bank 7,112 7,112 7,112 7,112
Hope Bonds 494 494 494 493
Plus: Other Debt Subject to Limit
Guaranteed Debt of
Government Agencies 0 0 0 0
Total Public Debt
Subject to Limit $ 16,330,896 $ 16,283,989 $ 16,222,235 $ 16,027,021
Statutory Debt Limit $ 16,394,000 $ 16,394,000 $ 16,394,000 $ 16,394,000
Act of 8/2/11, operated to permanently increase the statutory debt limit to $16,394
billion after 1/27/12.
Unamortized Discount represents the discount adjustment on Treasury bills and zero-coupon
bonds (amortization is calculated daily).
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