Fiscal Cliff

We now have the worst lame duck congress in history, and the republicans still don't want to deal? And their holdout is for - reducing taxes for the rich.

They're insane!

'Control of the House' is based mostly on Gerrymandered districts. The Dems received about a million more votes, in House races, than the GOP did.

Why? Simple; the majority of Americans "want" the rich to pay more taxes.

President Obama’s attempt to wrest control of the debt limit from Congress is getting quiet praise on Wall Street.

Wall Street groups Friday are wary of weighing in on any specific piece of the White House proposal’s to stave off tax hikes and spending cuts that could trigger a recession. The last thing they want to do is to pick sides in the fight over the “fiscal cliff.”
Yet the financial community has long wanted matters concerning the debt limit to be as routine as possible, and the financial industry recognizes Obama’s proposal could accomplish that goal.

“I think, more than anything, the goal is not to have a repeat of what happened last year ever again. The market uncertainty, the downgrade, everything,” said one financial industry representative who wished to remain anonymous. “Removing the recently established uncertainty over raising it, I think, would go a long way.”
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“We're prepared to, in a separate process, look at how to strengthen Social Security,” he said on ABC’s This Week. “But not as part of a process to reduce the other deficits the country faces.”
Geithner sounded optimistic on Sunday that both sides could come through with a deal. Talks between the White House and Congress are still in their early stages, but Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said this week that they were in “a stalemate” over raising tax rates and entitlement spending. Still, Geithner said the “political theatre” could be a sign of progress.

“I actually think that we’re gonna get there,” he said, adding, “Think we’re actually making a little bit of progress, but we’re still some distance apart.”

One of the proposals the Obama administration has floated is giving the White House authority to raise the debt limit with some Congressional checks, an idea originally proposed by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell during debt ceiling negotiations last year, though McConnell never intended it to be permanent, as the White House is now suggesting.

Geithner said such authority would give the president the ability to “lift the cloud of default over the economy,” while also giving Republicans political cover.

“Congress then has a chance to express its view to disapprove that,” Geithner continued. “It was a very smart way by a senator with impeccable Republican credentials to again, lift this threat, this periodic threat of default in the American economy.”

Geithner echoed Obama’s speech on Friday at a toy factory in Pennsylvania, where he pushed for a Senate-passed bill that extends middle-class tax cuts now so that Congress can separately address raising the rates on the top two percent of Americans.
He said Congressional Republicans were in a difficult position politically, which could hold up negotiations.

“You got to recognize that they're in a very difficult place,” he said. “And they recognize they're gonna have to move on a bunch of things. But they don't know really how to do it yet.”

He added on CNN’s State of the Union, “There's not going to be an agreement without rates going up." Source

Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) said Sunday she was "disappointed" with President Obama's proposal to avoid the "fiscal cliff" at the end of the year.
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It’s true Republicans still control the House. But this turns out to be at best a mixed blessing. Because they’re in control, House Republicans are supposed to negotiate with the president on the budget and taxes. They’re united in scorning President Obama’s opening proposal. But what’s the GOP proposal for averting the fiscal cliff? There doesn’t seem to be one.

Might it be prudent for Republicans to acquiesce, for now, to a modified version of Obama’s proposal to keep current income tax rates the same for 98 percent of Americans, while also insisting on maintaining the reduced payroll tax rate of the last two years (see “The GOP’s Payroll Tax Opportunity” above) and reversing the dangerous defense sequester? That deal would be doable, wouldn’t wreck the country, and would buy Republicans time to have much needed internal discussion and debates about where to go next.

Nope, can’t be done! There’s a pledge, you see, enforced by a stern and precise pledge-master who would be very, very upset if members of Congress were to have the presumption to unshackle themselves. As our modern-day Angelo (the original can be found in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure) put it last week, “Everybody who signed the pledge, including Peter King, who tried to weasel out of it, shame on him. .  .  . I hope his wife understands the commitments last a little longer than two years or something.”

Well, perhaps this evidence that their pledge-master has, shall we say, lost some perspective on life will help Republicans think for themselves. After all, surely Republican members of Congress understand there’s something crazy about appearing to fight to the death for a tax code in which Mitt Romney and others pay a 14 percent tax on millions of capital income​—​while silently allowing the payroll tax on labor to go up from 13.3 percent to 15.3 percent for all the working stiffs?

By the way, why isn’t allowing the payroll tax to go up a violation of the pledge? Well, we’re told, that cut was temporary. But weren’t the Bush rate cuts temporary too? Isn’t that why we’re going over the fiscal cliff​—​because we revert to the permanent rates on January 1? No, because apparently in the murky metaphysics of the plutocratic pledge-master, some temporary tax cuts are less temporary than others.

Will Republicans in Congress be successful at finding a way out of their current mess? Who knows. This year, the most well-funded Republican candidate in history, with the most professional campaign, supported by the most sophisticated super-PACs, proved unable to find a path to victory​—​even though such a path was eminently findable. Republicans in Congress are equally capable of winding up on the losing side of the equation. So 2012 could end up a lost year for the GOP.

And 2013? Politics is full of surprises. The Grand Old Party sure seems to be in a grand old mess. But messes can produce moments of opportunity, lemons can be turned into lemonade, and it’s always darkest before the dawn.

Except when it turns pitch black. Source