Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Fiscal Cliff follies - December 11 , 2012 Edition.....

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/12/11/obamas-new-fiscal-cliff-offer-instead-of-1-6-trillion-in-new-revenue-how-about-1-4-trillion/


Obama’s new fiscal cliff offer: Instead of $1.6 trillion in new revenue, how about $1.4 trillion?

POSTED AT 8:01 PM ON DECEMBER 11, 2012 BY ALLAHPUNDIT

  
First I thought, “Wait, aren’t he and Boehner supposed to be getting closer to a deal? This doesn’t sound close.” Then I thought, “Aha — he’s trying to drive a hard bargain on tax revenue so that he can concede on it later in exchange for stuff he really needs in the package, like a new round of stimulus spending and a debt-ceiling increase.” But then I thought, “If his demand on revenue is just a smokescreen, though, why float a new number? Why not just sit on $1.6 trillion so that his eventual concession to Boehner on this point looks even more magnanimous?”
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and President Obama have exchanged new offers in the negotiations over the “fiscal cliff.”…
Boehner’s office would not provide any details of the offer.
The Boehner offer came in response to a new White House proposal put on the table after Obama and Boehner met face-to-face on Sunday.
The new Obama offer contained $1.4 trillion in revenue, down from $1.6 trillion. Boehner in his new offer remained at $800 billion, a source confirmed.
Maybe … this is a spur to get Congress to take up tax reform? Even when the two sides are in concession mode, they’re so far apart on revenue that only a complete rethink of the tax code might bridge the gap in a mutually satisfactory way. Or maybe I’m kidding myself here and O really does want to go over the cliff, with his new $1.4 trillion a token concession meant to show how supposedly “reasonable” he is while knowing that the GOP will never agree to it. Although in that case, how to explain the fact that a source tells CNN the White House initially considered dropping its offer to $1.2 trillion before backing off to $1.4 trillion instead? Are they trying to reach a deal or not?
In related news, none of this matters because it’s all occurring outside the impenetrable cocoon of fiscal denial in which most Americans live their lives:
– Voters oppose, by 59 percent to 40 percent, raising the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 67. There’s a gender gap on that issue, with women more opposed to raising the age, perhaps reflecting their longer life expectancy.
– Voters oppose cutting overall spending for Medicare, by 74 percent to 23 percent.
– They oppose cutting spending for Medicaid, the program for the poor, by 70 percent to 26 percent.
– They oppose reducing the federal tax deduction for home mortgage interest, by 67 percent to 29 percent.
– They oppose eliminating the tax deduction for charitable contributions, by 69 percent to 28 percent.
Lest you think it’s Democrats driving the entitlement side of those numbers, note that a majority of Republicans opposes each of those measures also, per McClatchy. The one and only fiscal proposal to draw majority support among the general public was, you guessed it, tax hikes on the rich.
Exit question: Is “let it burn” the only way to crack open the cocoon? Watch Rand Paul make the case, LIB-style, for tax hikes at 2:19.
and.......

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/12/11/boehner-can-we-just-be-honest-about-this-were-broke/

Boehner: Can we just be honest about this? We’re broke.

POSTED AT 3:21 PM ON DECEMBER 11, 2012 BY ERIKA JOHNSEN

  
On the House floor on Tuesday, Speaker John Boehner broke from the mutual semi-silence of what’s been going on between himself and President Obama on the fiscal-cliff negotiations, and informed the Congress that all he’s waiting on are some proposals for spending cuts from the White House on which they would be willing to make moves as part of the “balanced approach” we’ve heard so much about (emphasis mine):
The Republicans made a serious offer to avert the fiscal cliff… Let’s be honest, we’re broke. And the plan that we’ve offered is consistent with the president’s call for a balanced approach. A lot of people know that the president and I met on Sunday. It was a nice meeting, it was cordial. But we’re still waiting for the White House to identify what spending cuts the president is willing to make as part of the balanced approach that he promised the American people. You know, where are the president’s spending cuts? The longer the White House slow walks this process, the closer our economy gets to the fiscal cliff. … We know that the president wants more stimulus spending and an increase in the debt limit without any cuts or reforms. That’s not fixing the problem, frankly, it’s making it worse. On top of that, the president wants to raise tax rates on many small business owners. Now, even if we did exactly what the president wants, we would see red ink for as far as the eye can see. That’s not fixing the problem either, it’s making it worse and hurting our economy.
This is a point about which I don’t think Republicans are being nearly vocal enough: President Obama’s plan is nowhere near the realm of seriousness. He may have the bigger platform from which to trumpet the ostensible benefits of his plan, but the cold, hard reality is that he’s proposing a whole heap of new spending, and merely hiking taxes on the wealthy will do perilously close to nothing to help us bring down our deficit gap. Observe: Even if the president’s proposal works perfectly and brings in the amount of revenue the White House claims it will (I wouldn’t bet on it), a full three-quarters of these tax hikes would go toward new spending. Balanced approach, say what?
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said much the same thing to his chamber during Tuesday’s proceedings — the White House needs to get serious and name their cuts.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, however, said Obama’s $400 billion spending cut proposal is “vague.”
“Until the president gets specific about cuts, nobody should trust Democrats to put a dime in new revenue toward real deficit reduction or to stop their shakedown of the taxpayers at the top 2%,” the Kentucky Republican said Tuesday on the Senate floor shortly before Boehner’s remarks. …
“Don’t you think (Obama) could put together a list of spending cuts that at least, at least includes robo-squirrel? We are still waiting,” McConnell said.

I’d say the onus is on the White House to present the other half of this mysteriously balanced approach they keep talking about. We get that the president would like to hike taxes, virtually eliminate the debt ceiling, and just leave the spending-cut plan for later next year; what else ya’ got?
Predictably, of course, the White House was not impressed.

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