I thought the “cliff” was the current tax rates that are expiring plus the spending cuts to medicare providers and defense. Everyone who currently pays income taxes will lose more from their paycheck - whether you’re lower, middle, or upper income earners. On top of that everyone’s payroll taxes will go up by 2 percent. Other “goodies” in going over the cliff entail AMT, I think, the estate tax limits, etc.
What entitlement spending is being cut besides Medicare?
There are actually two events that are coinciding. There are the current tax rate expirations and medicare provider compensation reductions and mandated defense spending cuts. And there is the National Debt Limit.
The rate expirations are just that - GWBs tax deductions that will expire pushing income taxes back up to Clinton levels. The medicare provider compensation rate reductions are almost a yearly thing that Congress has been kicking down the road for decades it seems. Obama needs to keep his HHS/ACA doctors happy or they’ll revolt when the 2014 ACA draconian measures kick in.
Back about a year ago or so, the Debt Limit increase deal between Congress and the President included many things if a Blue Ribbon Commission couldn’t “work things out” by about now (spending).
Well, they haven’t, and the cuts are coming across the board in spending and Obama don’t like it one doggone bit because he can’t continue historical entitlement support levels, and with the DEBT LIMIT, he can’t add that extra 1 or 2 Trillion dollars of entitlement spending like he did in 2011/2012.
What does all this mean? Obama wants to extend the BUSH tax reductions - only for certain people - Obama people, and he wants to symbolically rape people who have been successful through hard work. HE KNOWS AND THE MEDIA KNOWs that if the tax rates expire, IT WILL PUSH the economic situation to a much, much worse level - HIGHER unemployment, LESS Federal Tax Revenue (cash hoarding will stop GDP expansion that brings more tax revenue and so on), and less money for “his” people.
Ordinarily, Obama would just tell little Timmy Geitner to have the Fed print up more cash to buy our own T-bills and he could kick the entitlement can (expanding) down the road four more years. With the DEBT LIMIT, he can’t (not legally, anyway). So he’s between a rock and a hard place.
If the Republicans didn’t do a deal - did nothing, he’d automatically have higher tax rates, less tax revenue, less medicare compensation payments and still have a debt limit that essentially limits his spending (and entitlement buyoffs) to what’s brought in - just like every hardworking family has to deal with week in week out.
That is why I don’t want a deal. I want him stopped, period. If it costs me $10 for a gallon of milk or gas, my SS check, whatever, it would be worth it to see him financially impotent. If this Democrat spend, spend, spend ideology is fully and completely discredited, then there is no hope for this country, and that will take some sacrifice.