Posted on 11/18/2012 5:08:01 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Everyone came away from the initial summit meeting between Obama, Boehner and Reid with big smiles and a public air of confidence that Friday's kumbaya moment would lead to The Big Deal. Call me a cynic, but I'm still not buying it. Yesterday, AP touched on a part of this story, tossing out some ideas about how everyone --- particularly Democrats ... might walk away with relatively clean hands if no deal is reached on the fiscal cliff this year. It's all true, but for some of us there's a bit more to the story. The Democrats, for their part, seem to have plenty to gain and not much to lose.
Some Democrats are pushing an unorthodox idea for coping with the "fiscal cliff" Let the government go over, temporarily at least, to give their party more bargaining leverage for changes later on.
The idea has plenty of skeptics, and the White House regards it frostily. But it illustrates the wide range of early negotiating positions being staked out by Republicans and Democrats as lawmakers gathered Tuesday for their first post-election talks on how to avoid the looming package of steep tax hikes and program cuts.
But why would this work for Barack Obama? Because – as we learned the hard way on election day – he can watch the polls with the best of them. And if this train goes off the rails he has reason to believe that he won’t be left holding the bag.
A new poll by Hart Research’s Geoff Garin, conducted for Americans for Tax Fairness — a group that wants the Bush-era tax cuts to end for those who earn more than $250,000 — found that a majority of voters cited changing the tax system as a key factor in their votes, and that the majority broke for President Barack Obama.
The survey also found that Democrats have changed the landscape on an issue that has eluded them for years — taxes. The survey found that most want the Bush-era cuts on top earners to expire, but that Republicans will shoulder blame if all of the Bush cuts, including those on the middle class, expire because a deal can’t be reached.
Basically, this works out to a win-win for Obama. Yes, he could look like the great peacemaker and try to strike some sort of grand bargain with Boehner. And if he did, he would likely get some of what he and the Democratic majority want in exchange for taking a slightly less than maximum raise on taxes for the most wealthy. But why?
If he takes a very hard line and forces the showdown to a collapse in discussions, several potentially positive (for him) results are baked into the cake. He can claim that Republicans refused a “balanced approach” and it’s their fault that everyone’s taxes went up. He then has the Democrats force a vote on a bill to only lower taxes on the middle class and the poor and just dares the GOP to vote against it. (They won’t.) At this point he has the tax / revenue increase he promised without giving up a single thing. Now the negotiations start anew to talk about “spending cuts” but the GOP’s major bargaining chip is gone. Obama gets to put up a far more shallow version of cuts, and if the Republicans don’t like it, they can choose to reject the deal and just let the deficit continue to skyrocket.
What Republican in their right mind could go for this? Perhaps more than we might think.
The Republican Party took the rap for the debt ceiling and is under suspicion for the fiscal cliff. A new Washington Post-Pew Research poll has 53 percent of Americans ready to blame Republicans if America actually goes over the edge and only 29 percent planning to point fingers at President Barack Obama.
Understanding this, thoughtful Republicans are feeling freer to risk the tea partiers’ wrath and cooperate with Democrats. The teams may disagree on much, but at least they’re now playing in the same ballpark.
How does that work? Fairly simple. Just as I’ve been saying since earlier this year, if you needed congressional action to raise taxes it would never happen. But in this case, to raise tax rates all you need is for Congress to do nothing. And when you need nothing done, there’s no better crack team than Congress. And once the taxes are up, even the GOP reps who have signed the Norquist pledge are free to sign a bill that lowers taxes… even if that doesn’t apply to the wealthy. They get to remain covered on their voting record in their home districts and blame the fallout on the Democrats.
Here’s the part where I reveal my secret strategy of how the GOP can thwart this plan and come out on top.
Hang on… there’s somebody at the door.
P4L
Duh, the Fiscal Cliff was Obama’s idea! Of course he does not want to solve it!
All taxes, only cuts to Defense=GOP ‘compromise’
” Republicans are terrified.”
ALWAYS....every day, on every issue.
1) Why we lost the election
2) Why we lose on everything else.
” Very simple solution here. Let the automatic spending cuts expire without doing anything. and forget about entitlements for now. Why give that to Obama?”
Bingo!
Maybe what we need to offer is one stop amnesty centers where they can pick up their green cards, sign up for food stamps and Obama-care, register their kids for school or free college, apply for citizenship and register to vote. All in Spanish with Spanish-English interpreters (for those who cant read Spanish either)
I bet Republicans could out-Santa Obama! Then they will vote for 'tax cuts for the rich'
You see any flaws in this plan?
WRT "fiscal cliff negotiations," the GOP can cave on tax cuts in exchange for spending cuts that won't happen, and then Charlie Brown will say that Lucy moved the football they would have kicked beautifully if Dems had not played that dirty trick.
WRT amnesty, they don't even need Lucy to move the football. The GOP (including those brilliant GOP advisers on TV and radio) will happily promise to "secure the border, never do it again, get Hispanic votes," etc., with a straight face.
Paul Krugman: “Raise top tax rate to 91%”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/19/opinion/krugman-the-twinkie-manifesto.html?ref=opinion
” Yet in the 1950s incomes in the top bracket faced a marginal tax rate of 91, that’s right, 91 percent, “
Bare-faced LIE. Back then, you could deduct everything except AIR!
You mean Krugman is a stupid, marxist idiot who doesn’t know what he’s talking about?
/rhetorical
Those sneaky Dems they promised us again. not again. They are diabolical and evil.
Reminds me of a freeper here who told me the Romney 47% video was all Dems fault because they are so evil they recorded him. It wasnt Romney's for being stupid. I actually forgot to answer that one.
How come we cant some evil (=smart) ones on the R side beating Dems for a change?
RE: Those sneaky Dems they promised us again. not again. They are diabolical and evil.
It happened more than once in the past. Both times under Republican Presidents.
Ronald Reagan explains a little farther in his autobiography: He did accept tax hikes “in return for (the Democrats’) agreement to cut spending by $280 billion,” but, Reagan continues, “the Democrats reneged on their pledge and we never got those cuts.”
President George H.W. Bush made the exact same deal with Democrats just a few years later.
Pretending to care about the deficit — created exclusively by their own profligate spending — Democrats demanded that Bush agree to a “balanced budget” package with both spending cuts and tax increases.
In June 1990, Bush did so, agreeing to tax hikes in defiance of his “read-my-lips, no-new-taxes” campaign pledge.
Again, Democrats, being Democrats, produced no spending cuts, and within two years the increased federal spending had led to a doubling of the deficit.
The Democrats didn’t care: All that mattered was that they had tricked Bush into breaking his tax pledge, which they celebrated all the way to Bush’s defeat in the next election.
We’re going to repeat the same insanity again hoping for a different result...
Who was it who said : “Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”?
Not only that, but instead of airing it immediately, they waited until a few weeks before election day. Diabolical!
I keep hearing some freepers talking about what a hero Romney is for ‘telling the truth’ while secretly recorded... twice ???
But if Romney knew (’the truth’) that half the country are moochers who want free stuff and wont vote for him then why did he keep telling us that tax cuts for guys like him was going to win the election?
Talk about incompetence : You see this story about the RNC hiring a company known for fraud who generated useless phony voter registrations (make believe people who wouldn't vote) and then having to fire them(the company) at a critical point in the campaign?
Republicans in the swing states of Colorado, Florida, North Carolina and Virginia have paid Strategic Allied Consulting at least $3 million in recent months for voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts, although the issues appear to be limited to Florida.
The story was first reported by NBC News.
Petti, Strategic Allied Consulting’s attorney in Arizona, said the consulting firm tracked the suspect signatures, which he said led to the single employee who was fired.
The lawyer said he did not know more details, but guessed that the now-fired employee had provided “false signatures” by completing voter registration “applications and (writing in) people's names.”
Other Florida counties have been looking into their voter registration cards, the lawyer said, and as many as a couple hundred other signatures may be in question.
RNC cuts ties with firm tied to questionable voter registration applications ( September 28th, 2012)
Yep, looks like Romney/RNC didn't turn out these made up people to vote.
GHW Bush has already admitted that he raised taxes to get a deal out of the way so he could go into Gulf I without opposition.
We were being sarcastic about these well meaning over-trusting Republicans getting snookered time after time because they are such nice guys.
Both sides want deficits when they are seen in charge.
They both want to save their own sides pork and want to use spending and tax cuts to gain/save enough voters to win elections. Neither are serious.\
Last year 2011 Ryan and CO with Dems passed a bunch of automatic spending cuts that will go into effect in a month or so.
Who has been screaming that these same spending cuts they passed will destroy this country this past 8 months or so? Republicans! Dems haven't said a word about them, or at least very little. This is after Ryan on the House floor called it a historical bipartision success
So what will they do with those spending cuts now?
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