posted
News reports indicate that Press Secretary Carney, when pressed by reporters, refused to commit the President to a veto, but he's threatened some sort of action of they "water down" the trigger.
Vague but threatening.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
Today has been a great day, the supercommittee has failed and the defense budget will get cut!
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posted
The Democrats will probably come out ever so slightly ahead in this. Polls show a majority of people agree with their plan to cut and raise taxes...
But if the trigger does go through it will be a mixed blessing. Most people don't support cuts to defense spending, necessary as I think it might be. The trigger is a pretty harsh mistress. However, cuts are still cuts, and everything has to feel the pinch. If Democrats stick to their guns and let the cuts go through, they might be able to work it to their advantage, especially if it forces Republicans to attack them for cutting spending.
I will say though, that Democratic plans to count less money for Iraq and Afghanistan is exactly what the GOP is calling it; a gimmick. You can't count that as savings.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:The Democrats will probably come out ever so slightly ahead in this. Polls show a majority of people agree with their plan to cut and raise taxes...
I don't know, it strikes me that the Republicans staked out a position (no tax increases) that they knew was going to fail from the very start. I get the feeling they may have put more planning into what they were going to do after the talks failed than the talks themselves. I expect to see their strategy emerge in the next couple of weeks.
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Although, maybe that is just me seeing strategy behind good old fashioned stupidity. I don't know, I see the Republicans moving more and more away from both what the majority of the country wants and things that would actually work in reality and I figure that they're doing it for a purpose.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
I think they fully expected the Democrats to cave weeks ago, and have no idea how to get out of this. The only people with them are their core base of voters. Independents are solidly with a tax AND cut plan. If Obama can bring on Candidate 2.0, a souped up version of how he ran four years ago, he'll mop the floor with them AND pick up seats in Congress.
I think they thought the no new taxes plan was going to work great, because they've rolled Obama so much already. Look what happened at the debt ceiling debate. They got an all cuts trillion dollar cut. I think they're floored that Democrats are refusing to do it all on cuts, and the only thing they know how to do is stick to their guns, because caving means that they piss even their base off, who are perfectly content to watch things collapse.
This is all by the seat of their pants.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
That's possible. Did you see Meet the Press this past Sunday? Jon Kyl basically said, "The Democrats just weren't willing to negotiate. We offered a wide range of spending cuts and they wouldn't go with any of them. They kept saying that we'd need to raise taxes as well. I mean how do you deal with people who aren't willing to completely cave and give you everything you want?"
The weird thing for me is that at least some of the Republicans have got to know that the things they are asking for are ridiculous. And I mean, not in the "our opponents aren't going to give this to us", but in the "this doesn't match with reality and/or this will severely damage the country" sort of way. That's the sort of thing you bring as a negotiating position. They shouldn't want to get them, let alone be unwilling to take anything less.
I mean, I'm starting to think that the march of insane plans from fantasyland that we're getting in the Republican primaries represents things that they are actually going to try to accomplish.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
lol I didn't see it, but I'll catch the clip later. What you just paraphrased has basically been their main talking point for weeks now.
The problem with the GOP is that this line was working fine a year ago. But the time to compromise was a year ago when they had the high ground. But they've ridden this issue into the ground now, and now the Democrats are on top of it. They badly miscalculated after Dems caved on the debt ceiling deal.
I read an article that came out right after the debt ceiling deal about how it wasn't as bad for Democrats as it looked, because Democrats could stonewall for tax cuts during the Super Committee, and if the GOP wouldn't cave, all they had to do was wait. Bush tax cuts are set to expire. Military spending is going to take a huge half trillion dollar hit. Dems are going to get a lot of what they want simply by doing nothing at all. With Obama actually threatening a veto of a GOP plan to kill the trigger, it looks like that's exactly what they are doing, and it's brilliant.
A year from now, the GOP is the party that wanted to sink the nation to protect the rich, and the Dems are the party that made the tough choices to cut spending and raise taxes on the wealthy when the GOP wanted to punt yet again.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
This seems so counter-intuitive I feel like I must be missing a major aspect of this development.
Why on earth is a two month extension of the payroll tax cut, which has extremely broad bi-partisan report suddenly dead in the water? They are saying it's these same freshmen congressmen who fouled up the debt limit deliberations. But if these numbers are accurate, how could the freshmen put a stop to it by themselves? Their numbers are not *that* significant. So what is at work here? Why is Boehner so beholden to this new group?
Either way, not letting the Bush tax cuts expire, while simultaneously letting the payroll tax do just that seems like such a hefty crate of ammunition to just hand the Democrats.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
I heard a Republican Congressman interviewed about this on my way to work. He says the House wants to extend the payroll tax cut for a year, not two months, and that two months would just be punting -- Congress nominally resumes on Jan 23, so this debate would start up again pretty much immediately with at two-month extension. A year extension, he said, would give workers and employers more certainty.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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quote:Originally posted by twinky: He says the House wants to extend the payroll tax cut for a year, not two months, and that two months would just be punting
And put the debate right in the peak of campaigning time, which they don't want.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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