Posted on 11/17/2011 9:13:36 AM PST by Qbert
Republicans on Wednesday signaled they would consider higher tax revenues to win a supercommittee deal if Democrats offer deeper cuts to entitlement spending.
Rep. Jeb Hensarling (Texas), a conservative Republican who is the co-chairman of the deficit supercommittee, walked back a statement he made Tuesday on television, when he said Republicans “have gone as far as we feel we can go” by offering to raise $250 billion in new tax revenues.
Briefing reporters on Wednesday, Hensarling said Republicans would be “more than happy to negotiate” around a new offer from Democrats, pointedly declining to say whether $250 billion was the maximum in new revenue the GOP could accept. “I’m waiting for the Democrats to put fundamental reform on the table,” Hensarling said.
He called on Democrats to make an offer that included significant changes to Medicare, Medicaid and overall healthcare spending. “I’m not going to negotiate against myself. That is one offer we have put on the table that they can accept,” Hensarling said.
Republicans are under pressure to win a deal to avoid automatic cuts to Pentagon spending that would be triggered if the supercommittee fails to agree to at least $1.2 trillion in deficit cuts over 10 years. The prospect of those cuts has given Democrats leverage, and both sides have worked to cast the other party as inflexible.
Cuts to Medicare would also be triggered under the summer deal to raise the debt ceiling, but critically, these cuts would be limited to insurance companies and would not touch entitlement benefits. Social Security and Medicaid are exempt from the automatic cuts.
Hensarling’s comments came as leaders in both parties sought to bridge an ideological gulf exactly one week before the supercommittee’s Nov. 23 deadline to propose at least $1.2 trillion in deficit savings.
Republican and Democratic members of the debt panel huddled separately throughout Wednesday, with both sides acknowledging the obvious: Time is running out.
“We continue to meet, and we continue to negotiate, but in the back of our minds we know the stroke of midnight is coming soon,” Hensarling said. He noted that the supercommittee must submit proposals to the Congressional Budget Office by Monday.
“Time’s ticking away,” GOP panel member Rep. Dave Camp (Mich.) told reporters as he left a meeting in Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) office late Wednesday.
Hensarling said Democrats must offer to seriously tackle entitlement spending before Republicans move off their principal public offer of $1.2 trillion in budget savings, with $250 billion in new net taxes.
“I give my Democratic colleagues credit for at least putting some reforms on the table, but they do not solve the problem,” Hensarling said. Until they propose a plan that does, he said, Republicans won’t move.
“We’re not changing this offer we have on the table,” he said.
Hensarling’s hard-line comments Tuesday in an appearance on CNBC threatened to explode the delicate negotiations, but on Wednesday he made it clear the GOP could move in reaction to a new Democratic offer.
“We wait for their solution, so I’m not rejecting any offer out of hand,” Hensarling said Wednesday. “Quite the opposite. I’m still waiting for a new offer to be put on the table. … Should that offer come, I am more than happy to negotiate around that offer.”
Hensarling said Republicans had made “multiple offers,” but would not describe any of them except for the one that has become public: a $1.2 trillion deficit plan from Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.). The GOP offer on revenues is predicated on blocking a tax increase in 2013 that would come with the expiration of the George W. Bush-era tax cuts. Republicans are proposing to permanently lower business and income rates while generating revenue by scrapping deductions, which aides note are used primarily by the wealthy.
Hensarling specifically urged Democrats to embrace a Medicare proposal from the bipartisan Rivlin-Domenici commission, which would partially shift Medicare to a premium support system. Democrats have opposed the proposal as privatizing Medicare, and aides pushed back on Hensarling’s comments by noting that the GOP’s own supercommittee proposal does not mention premium support.
Democrats dismissed Hensarling’s claim on entitlement reform, arguing that the $350 billion in Medicare cuts they have proposed in their larger plan is actually bigger than the Medicare cuts the GOP offered in its smaller proposal.
Republican leaders were being pulled in opposite directions Wednesday within their own party. A bipartisan group of more than 150 House and Senate lawmakers renewed their call for the supercommittee to “go big” and strike at least a $4 trillion deal that included new tax revenues, entitlement reforms and discretionary spending cuts.
As part of that coalition, the third-ranking Senate Republican leader, Sen. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), argued that Republicans on the supercommittee needed to offer more revenues if the deficit panel hopes to balance the country’s books.
“This is about more than money, it’s about whether the president and the Congress can competently govern,” Alexander said. “We now have Republicans who have put revenues on the table [and] we have Democrats on the supercommittee who have put entitlements on the table.
“Both need to put more on the table and get a result, and we’re here to support them,” he said.
From the right flank, the conservative Republican Study Committee circulated a letter opposing any net increase in tax revenues.
“With current levels of taxation already limiting economic growth, we believe that marginal rates must be maintained or lowered and that repeal of any tax credit or deduction be offset with an equal or greater tax cut,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter that was highlighted by Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform.
On the other side, a liberal group, the Campaign for America’s Future, urged the deficit panel to fail, arguing that steep budget cuts would be “ruinous” for the already fragile economic recovery.
Hensarling looked for help from President Obama, who is traveling in Australia. He noted that he told the president in a phone call last Friday that he wanted Obama to clarify or rescind a veto threat he issued to Congress back in September, when he said he would reject any plan to overhaul entitlement programs without asking the wealthy to pay more in taxes.
“His veto threat has been widely interpreted to mean there can be no reforms of our unsustainable Medicare and healthcare spending until attached to a trillion-dollar tax increase that we believe fundamentally would make the jobs crisis even worse,” Hensarling said.
“As I indicated to the president, if that was not indeed his wish, then he should either clarify that veto threat or withdraw that veto threat,” he added. “That is something that could be very helpful for the president to do to these negotiations.”
— Mike Lillis, Erik Wasson and Molly K. Hooper contributed.
— Posted at 3:27 p.m. and updated at 8:02 p.m.
Are the Republicans suicidal as well as stupid?
Republicans being stupid is an (unfortunately) oft-proved fact, given that they get snookered about 90% of the time by the Dems. You see, they think that politics is played by some set of gentlemen’s rules, when there is only one rule: WIN!
Suicidal, because millions that voted for Republican candidates in 2010 did so because of the explicit promise made to control the government. The only control that means anything is to limit its spending, and that also means starving it of revenue as much as possible to limit the spending. If they go back on their word by voting for a tax increase, then why in the world should anyone vote for them? At least the Dems are honest - they tell you in advance that they want to tax and regulate you nearly to death, and then to take as much money out of your pockets as possible before your family gets anything. Why vote for a 2-faced party that lies to your face and insults you by repeatedly claiming that “next time we’ll REALLY put the screws to them?”
In a 2-party system, one party is the opposition. What is the point of being the opposition party if you’re not going to, you know, ACTUALLY OPPOSE the party in power? Sometimes that means defeat and being pilloried in the press, and sometimes even not being invited to fashionable parties in Georgetown. I know that such is a heavy burden to bear </overwhelming sarcasm>, but that’s the whole damned point of being the opposition.
Seriously, I expect the Republican Party to give the finger to Obama and the Dems, to give them literally NOTHING, and to squawk loudly to the citizens of this country about how the Dems WANT a Super Committee failure so as to blame the Republicans. We have a genuine fiscal/economic crisis, and the Dems are just playing politics and preventing any realistic solutions. The Republicans shouldn’t cooperate (i.e. be useless idiots for the Dems), even if it costs them some brownie points with the rest of the inside-the-Beltway scumbags that have sold out our nation for power and money. Resistance is NOT futile - and the failure to resist WILL lose you LOTS of votes.
“Thanks Republicans for caving in. Just what we elected you for.”
The morons don’t understand that it’s not the Democrats that they are negotiating with here- it’s everyday Americans. Instead of crawling on their knees begging Obama not to raise taxes in 2013- the GOP needs to take that case to the people:
Taxes will shoot up dramatically when the Bush tax rates are repealed- and this isn’t simply “millionaires and billionaires”- this is you, “middle-class” Americans living paycheck to paycheck. You get to pay for all of the trillions wasted on loan guarantees to donor billionaires, etc. We don’t want this to happen- Obama and the Dems do... So, are you with us, or not?
Please understand that the Dems can never allow spending cuts. That would be suicide for them. If there were real spending cuts then we would see that the world did not come to an end. Then we could go for more spending cuts. No the Dems will never allow this camel nose into the tent.
HEY JEB, YEAH YOU! What in the Hensarling are you doing?
If you say that you “ - - - would consider higher tax revenues to win a supercommittee deal - - - “, then what in the Hensarling are you CONSERVING?
ANYONE who raises taxes is guilty of DESTROYING money!
IF you want to cave-in and be a part of the Bipartisian Cave-in movement that has ALWAYS sold America down the river, then you no longer are conserving a damn thing.
You will be just another RINO. No better than Romney, McCain and all the other Rockefeller Republicans.
BTW, we are not eating anymore of the “go-along-to-get-along” GOP-Poop any more. Stand and deliver with us, or we will stand against you.
I disagree.
The Republican Party, however, is trying to become a worthless lost cause.
We may be seeing a New Party arise.
TWB
“This could also be the GOP calling the Democrats’ bluff.”
There is no bluff-calling here.
Reagan was brilliant at bluff-calling (PATCO; Reyjavik, etc.)- this is operating solely out of cowardice and weakness with the GOP today.
alas, we again reap the disasterous “fruits” of another rino republican compromise (i.e., boehner’s rule by oligarchy bill). complete divided government stalemate would have been far better.
is there anyone who still thinks the republican collective establishment, in all it’s fearful spinning and thrashing, isn’t as bad or worse then the marxist driven dems?
LLS
The gop is NOT smart... so you can eliminate that line of thought.
LLS
LLS
Regretfully, I agree with you. The GOP leadership is gutless and useless except as useful tools of the far left Democrats.
We either need to take over the party or start a new one. If Romney gets nominated, its time for another new party.
“Republicans on Wednesday signaled they would consider higher tax revenues to win a supercommittee deal if Democrats offer deeper cuts to entitlement spending”
Well of course they will. Anything to appease the Democrats. Until we rid ourselves of the RINO leadership in the House and Senate the American public is SOL.
"boehner and cantor are cutting these deals weeks in advance of us finding out. our leadership is in total agreement and is conspiring with the dims to bring about socialism... the republicons know EXACTLY what they are doing... they did it to us on Cut, Cap and Balance."
Yep- notice that the Hill article quoted Hensarling calling Obama last Friday... but there's absolutely no word about what Obama said in response??
Amen GG2!
LLS
I agree 1000%!
LLS
“Those stupid, stupid fools”
Why are those Republicans in Congress who signal a willingness to increase taxes “fools”, when a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination who supports an almost-ten-percent national sales tax across the board (and who is a favorite of many folks in this forum), not?
Why would a nine percent sales tax on everything I buy be good for me?
Or for the country?
Those are serious questions, soliciting serious answers...
Because it is a replacement for the current income tax that: 1) is lower 2) out in the open (not hidden in the costs) 3) can be mitigated by (not) buying and/or buying used. That does not sound foolish to me, that sounds like freedom.
So, GOP House members can vote against it, even though they know it will pass since it will take 75% of the House to kill it.
A disgrace!
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