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Speaker John Boehner is playing a relatively weak hand
The recent emergence of Speaker John Boehner’s Plan B perfectly highlights the most important aspect of the current negotiations, mainly that there is no reason President Obama even needs to compromise.
Currently, the Republicans know they are on the losing side, both politically and legislatively, when it comes to tax rates on top income earners. That is why Boehner is now proposing to just raise taxes on people making over a million dollars a year without any concessions from Democrats to get his party out of their current bind. From Politico:
House Republicans, discouraged by the pace of negotiations with the White House, will move their own bill that would hike tax rates on income above $1 million, according to several sources familiar with the plan.
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told President Barack Obama of his plan last night on a phone call, according to sources.
Boehner will make the argument to House Republicans that tax rates will go up on everyone come Jan. 1. “The question for us is real simple: How do we stop as many of those rate hikes as possible?” Boehner plans to tell House Republicans.
The Republican Party is already prepared to partially fold on taxes and there are still two weeks left until the new year. It is perfectly reasonable to suspect that if Obama plays hardball he could force the Republicans to move even closer to his original $250,000 demand. Obama can likely get most of the tax increases he wants without giving anything up in return.
This means the only two big unresolved issues are the sequestration cuts, which both parties hate, and the debt ceiling. There is every reason to believe Obama could force the GOP to eventually relent on both matters without making any real concessions.
That leaves the extension of unemployment benefits and a small amount of infrastructure spending as the only things Obama would have gotten in his recent deal offer that he probably couldn’t force the GOP to agree to by simply waiting them out. Those are both relatively small items compared to a large and deeply unpopular Social Security benefit cut.
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I’m sooo confused! Why are they even talking about SS? I was told that it’s not even a budget item. So how does cutting it help the deficit?
Besides, the Republicans can’t possibly give a damn about the nickels and dimes we save by going with the chained CPI (or whatever); WS (ergo Republicans) wants into that pile of trust fund trillions, that’s right up there with “defense spending” and Church property tax exemption as the greatest transfer of wealth in sight. Don’t you think.
A modest proposal: Would you do a diary on the SS issue alone? Please.
I don’t understand this argument.
Obama’s counter-offer with chained CPI already gives Republicans 90% of what they want.
It seems like Boehner’s plan B is simply trying to get 95%.
Whether he succeeds or not in ekeing out that last 5%, it’s already assured that the GOP won the fiscal cliff stand-off, despite having very little actual leverage.
Jon,
I am getting really confused. The President has been telling everybody from the start that he wants to cut S.S., Medicare and make other cuts. Practically the entire democratic base and press seem to think that it is the republicans who want to make these cuts. Now that Boehner has taken the cuts off the table, with Plan B, how does Obama pin this on the Republicans?
As long as the Republicans are seen as the ones that want to make cuts to S.S. and Medicare, I don’t think they will make the deal. They may be greedy but they aren’t stupid.
Who cares about the debt ceiling? It is totally unconstitutional, and the president has ample tools at his disposal to get around it.
Carney:
Pelosi:
The train
wreckis leaving the station.The train wasn’t stopping for us anyway. It is a question of what big corporate/MOTU interests want and the 99% get screwed.
I would suppose Obama is trying to keep the middle class rates. He will have to give up something to get it. But I agree he doesn’t need to do anything just yet. Wait until after the first of the year. Even then I doubt he has to make any cuts in spending. These elites are just nuts for their taxes. You can ride that horse all the way.
That requires a political courage to make happen aka balls.
Lessor of two evils right? Right?
So now Rasmussen says 73% say the government should cut spending. To quote Warren Mosler: “good grief”.
Here’s David Dayen today on protecting the most vulnerable. My bold.
There are a couple variables in the reporting. First of all, Administration sources say that they plan to protect “the most vulnerable populations.” For example, they don’t want to apply chained CPI to wounded veterans and the disabled on Supplemental Security Income. This is an admission that people will get hurt by chained CPI; they’re just trying to manage the fallout. The rest of the ways to protect the most vulnerable haven’t been defined. Usually, you see some sort of “bump-up” in benefits to compensate for the changes to the COLA, particularly for the poorest recipients. However, the National Women’s Law Center points out that the bump-up envisioned in Bowles-Simpson (which included chained CPI) would only restore benefits to current-law levels for two years, before falling behind again. So we don’t know, but if the bump-up took complete care of the benefit cut, nobody would be suggesting doing this as a means to save money.
If they cared about the “most vulnerable” they wouldn’t be doing any of this. Statement not directed at you, of course.
Notice Carney’s wording in the quote in #5 (my bold):
Next thing you know, it will be “the very, truly, extremely elderly”.
Can you imagine the Democrats acting the way they are if Romney was making the same proposals as Obama?
The more effective evil works his magic for the MOTU.
Translate that to people who are on hospice care and no longer a profit center for business/sickcare.
How these people live with themselves is a mystery.
They could mean defense spending. Or deductions for the 1%ers and oil subsidies, too. What we need is a major snow storm in Washington, D.C. This ensures a white Christmas for Our Fearless Leader and his lovely family and, maybe a total shut down of that city for 2-3 days. It does wonders for the cities in the Rockies.
I was gonna suggest “Legitimatly” elderly, but I think you got an even better take on it.
Didn’t vote for O this time. Saw exactly who he was.
That said. Didn’t take long for O to change this time from for the people to for the rich people.
He never was for the people and therefore didn’t change. He has always been the same, the more effective evil.
The Washington, D.C.-based think tank found that from 2007 to 2009, average annualized household wealth declined by 16 percent for the richest fifth of Americans and 25 percent for the rest of the country.
But even with the across-the-board income drops, EPI researchers found that in 2009 the wealthiest 1 percent of U.S. households had net worth that was 225 times greater than the typical median household’s net worth.
That disparity, according to EPI, is the highest ratio on record.
Where is the actual middle class represented in the current bargaining?
You know what they say, “Sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug”.
Well put BSB and RM. Patient care generating negative cash flow????? I’m telling you guys. The “Soylent Green” argument is gonna surface sooner or later.
Outside looking in with trepidation.
I mean for him to show it.
Of course he never was for the people.