[familyop]

"I think this is good because Obama already raised the stakes by raising his demand for new taxes from $800 billion to $1.6 trillion."

The "1.6 trillion" plan is over a decade: ten years, which is $160 billion per year. $800 billion is the combination of scheduled automatic spending cuts and tax hikes (expiration of tax cuts) during the first year, with the scheduled tax hikes (expiration of tax cuts) of the "fiscal cliff" being near $400 billion per year. So he's wanting to limit the tax hikes to the incomes in the top 40 percent of those who would pay higher taxes under the expiration of the tax cuts. He's enticing the upper middle class to support tax hikes against the "wealthy" (not good good at all but going to happen).

So the choices are between $160 billion in tax hikes and all of the scheduled spending cuts, or nearly $400 billion in tax hikes and compromises against the spending cuts.

The House should leave it alone and resist any and all compromises on the spending cuts. The spending cuts must happen. Only a little over $37 billion of those cuts are against defense spending (per year) and the rest against many useless and detrimental political regulator programs against starting production again. And of course, increase military spending as needed as soon as possible in the near future.

[WashingtonSource]

Thanks for the details. So, does this mean the GOP has leverage against the $1.6 trillion because we would actually really and truly for the first time ever see cuts in spending if we go over the fiscal cliff? If we do go over the fiscal cliff, we need to make sure Obama gets the blame. The fiscal cliff was his idea, after all.