White House Says It Has No New Fiscal Cliff Plan

ABC News ^

[Sub-Driver]

White House Says It Has No New Fiscal Cliff Plan

By JON KARL, SUNLEN MILLER (@sunlenmiller) , JOHN PARKINSON (@jparkABC) and SARAH PARNASS (@wordsofsarah) Dec. 27, 2012

The White House said today it has no plans to offer new proposals to avoid the fiscal cliff which looms over the country's economy just five days from now, but will meet Friday with Congressional leaders in a last ditch effort to forge a deal.

Republicans and Democrats made no conciliatory gestures in public today, despite the urgency.

The White House said President Obama would meet Friday with Democratic and Republican leaders. But a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner said the Republican "will continue to stress that the House has already passed legislation to avert the entire fiscal cliff and now the Senate must act."

The White House announced the meeting after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., called the budget situation "a mess" and urged the president to present a fresh proposal.

"I told the president I would be happy to look at whatever he proposes, but the truth is we're coming up against a hard deadline here, and as I said, this is a conversation we should have had months ago," McConnell said of his phone call with Obama Wednesday night.

McConnell added, "Republicans aren't about to write a blank check for anything Senate Democrats put forward just because we find ourselves at the edge of the cliff."

"That having been said, we'll see what the president has to propose," the Republican Senate leader said.

[hummingbird]

"The republicans now must play the only card they have. Shut the government down. Let's find out if the constitutional separation of powers actually works."

oldbrowser, do you think republicans will really do this?

Interesting.

[oldbrowser]

oldbrowser, do you think republicans will really do this?

I doubt it. They will let Obama drag them through the mud. Just as long as they don't lose their office.
I believe that Obama and many others sense that this is the time for the marxists to strike hard and make permanent changes to the country.

[BobL]

Let me explain the politics here - since no one else is willing/able to do so.

The Republicans lost Congress in 2006 because Bush pushed Amnesty so hard and left the base demoralized. When the base in demoralized they don’t vote...that simple. In 2012, the Republicans ran a guy that would have only been somewhat better than Obama (at best). The base was demoralized, they didn’t vote...that simple.

Now we’re looking at 2014. Obama knows that a highly motivated Republican base will come out and vote, and hold the House. But if Obama can separate the Republican Leadership from the base (i.e., Tea Party), then the Dems get the House back.

Next question is how to do that. The easy way is to get the Republican Leadership to tell the Tea Party to take a hike - and the way to do that is a two-step process:

1) Install a bunch of Metrosexuals as advisers to the Republican Leadership. Check. That has already been done, obviously. Their job is to accomplish #2.

2) Get enough Republicans in the House to vote Obama’s way, by putting them in terror of the dreaded “Independents”. “We MUST not anger these Independents”, the Metrosexuals tell the leadership, “we must do as the president says, they say”.

But they know, FULL WELL, that if the Tea Party sees the Republicans cave now, they will simply stay home - and the permanent Democrat majority for the next generation, at the least, will be born.

So this is it. If we want our base to come out in 2014, we stand up to the president. If we want our base to stay home in 2014. to give the Democrats the House, then we do just as Obama wants.