Prez wants GOP to just do the math
Obama’s message to GOP is, Ante up
By Ruth Marcus, WashPost, Published: November 14
As the debt ceiling loomed last year, President Obama believed that Republicans had him over a barrel. They had won the midterm election. More important, calling the GOP’s bluff seemed too big a bet: Defaulting on the debt risked plunging the global financial system into chaos.
The president’s mind-set as the “fiscal cliff” approaches is far feistier. He won reelection in a campaign that centered on higher taxes for the wealthy. Even more, in the White House view, the hazard of cliff-jumping is way less than the danger of ceiling-hitting.
So rather than extend the Bush tax cuts for higher-income taxpayers, the president is willing to risk another recession — a move he would blame, and with good reason, on Republican intransigence.
Consequently, the president has adopted a doubly tough posture as cliff negotiations commence. First, he is looking for an amount of new tax revenue far greater than House Speaker John Boehner was unable to deliver last year: $1.6 trillion over 10 years, including a $1 trillion installment to get past the cliff. That is an opening bid — an updated version of earlier proposals — but a daringly high one.
Republicans have signaled a grudging willingness to raise new revenue. What matters, Boehner said last week, is whether this comes from raising tax rates or from “a growing economy, energized by a simpler, cleaner, fairer tax code, with fewer loopholes, and lower rates for all.”
(More here.)
As the debt ceiling loomed last year, President Obama believed that Republicans had him over a barrel. They had won the midterm election. More important, calling the GOP’s bluff seemed too big a bet: Defaulting on the debt risked plunging the global financial system into chaos.
The president’s mind-set as the “fiscal cliff” approaches is far feistier. He won reelection in a campaign that centered on higher taxes for the wealthy. Even more, in the White House view, the hazard of cliff-jumping is way less than the danger of ceiling-hitting.
So rather than extend the Bush tax cuts for higher-income taxpayers, the president is willing to risk another recession — a move he would blame, and with good reason, on Republican intransigence.
Consequently, the president has adopted a doubly tough posture as cliff negotiations commence. First, he is looking for an amount of new tax revenue far greater than House Speaker John Boehner was unable to deliver last year: $1.6 trillion over 10 years, including a $1 trillion installment to get past the cliff. That is an opening bid — an updated version of earlier proposals — but a daringly high one.
Republicans have signaled a grudging willingness to raise new revenue. What matters, Boehner said last week, is whether this comes from raising tax rates or from “a growing economy, energized by a simpler, cleaner, fairer tax code, with fewer loopholes, and lower rates for all.”
(More here.)
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