Associated Press
House Speaker John Boehner's "Plan B" p.r. stunt only makes sense if he can convince his caucus to play along. The problem, of course, is that many House Republicans don't feel like it.
While twisting arms yesterday, the Speaker pleaded with his colleagues -- the folks he ostensibly leads -- reminding them that his plan has been endorsed by conservative stalwarts such as FreedomWorks. This afternoon, FreedomWorks announced it has changed its mind, and is urging Republicans to vote against Boehner's plan.
Left with dwindling options, the Speaker keeps trying to make his "Plan B" more palatable by making it uglier.
[N]ow Plan B also tries to roll back Dodd-Frank bank regulation reforms and turn us back to Bush-era financial regulation policy. It also cuts food stamps, Medicaid spending, and some Affordable Care Act provisions. In other words, it's a whole conservative Christmas tree.
There's nothing wrong with that. If the point of the legislation is to outline a conservative alternative to Obama's position, they may as well stuff it with things conservatives like. But it's worth examining the ornaments. When John Boehner needs to add spending cuts to a deficit reduction bill to make his most conservative members happy, they don't want to re-index Social Security benefits. They don't want to monkey with the Medicare eligibility age. That's not the stuff that gets them jazzed up. Taking food out of the mouths of hungry children, by contrast, is something they're excited about. They're eager to reduce regulation on banks and cut back on poor people's health care. Cutting spending on the elderly is something they'll maybe consider as part of a deal with Obama. Cutting spending on the poor is their idea of Christmas.
Well said. We're not just learning how feckless John Boehner is as a House Speaker -- the weakest in modern times -- we're also getting a very good look at Republicans' true priorities. For all of their demands about entitlement reforms, when GOP leaders have to entice support from their conference, they try to gut aid to the poor. Period. Full stop.
Of course, if Boehner somehow passes this ridiculous bill, he'll try to deflect blame -- he raised taxes on millionaires and billionaires, he'll insist, but Democrats balked at his plan so it's their fault the process collapsed.
But "Plan B" isn't just about top marginal rates. It's been loaded up like an Ayn Rand Christmas tree, filled with right-wing ornaments, while giving most of the very rich a tax cut, and increasing taxes on lower and middle income households.
Is it any wonder Boehner is struggling so badly to get to 218?
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Their real priority is the same as it has been since 1932: gut every aspect of anything associated with the New Deal.
Where are the black helicopters and the blue-helmeted troops and the FEMA camps when we really need them???
Boehner is the Ghost of Hoover past.
it's not fair to compare boehner to hoover. hoover did actually care about the poor - his pre-presidential background was largely humanitarian - and he even tried many things considered progressive in his time. he just couldn't comprehend the magnitude of the crisis and just how much would have to change to address it.
calling boehner a scumbag is an insult to scumbags.
Cry-Baby Boehner doesn't give two @!$%#s about the poor except for how he can punish them to satisfy the sadistic urges of GOoPer freaks like yourself. Plan B can be summed up as follows: If we starve some poor children and give the savings to rich people as a tax cut, maybe they'll feel generous and hire a few more minimum wage workers with no benefits. That's the entirety of the GOP domestic agenda.
People take those jobs because they like to eat and have a box to live in.
I see why they call him John Bain-Whore.
Well they have the prez helping them, who needs anything else?
@Cliff, the "poor" already get back most of their taxes, this impacts the middle class and the rich. $1,000,000 and above being the only ones with an income tax increase (which still wouldn't touch many of their primary earnings through capital gains) is a worthless gesture. If he doesn't want to take the $400,000 the President offered then I say let it ride on past January and then offer back the $250,000--which will look a bit sweeter by then.
It seems to me that Boehner is really negotiating in public, giving voice to his caucus.
No, he's negotiating WITH his caucus.
None of this is going to pass the Senate, or be signed by the President, and Boehner knows it.
The problem with making this a "position" bill, is that there are a lot of things his caucus might agree to in a deal, that they don't want to admit to in a "position paper."
You you might be right, but if he was negotiating with his caucus he would do it behind close doors. (Hell he should be doing that with the President.) I think he is publiclly showing his caucus and supporters that he is trying to sell their position. The question for me is how does the President responds. Does he tell Boehner to get back in the room? Does he just say no? Does he negotiate in public? You tell me how he responds.
No. Those should be going on with full Press coverage.
That way, there won't be any doubt about whose fingerprints are on what and which party is dragging its feet on what.
My fantasy right now is for the President to ask, officially, for the House to appoint someone with authority to negotiate on their behalf. No point in going into detail with a flunky who isn't authorized to make a deal.
Ron I think you might have missed the point of the article. "Plan B" was entirely Boehner's idea and was supposed to get passed by the Republican majority in the House in order to try and paint Democrats and the President as the ones not allowing the tax break to be maintained--but Boehner is so terrible at his job that he was unable to sweeten HIS OWN DEAL in order to get HIS OWN CAUCUS to vote for it!
2 disgusted 4 words.
Now, now, in all fairness - Bonehead can't go to the pub like he's used to doing and you know how "funny" people are when they're drunk. So he's kinda doing this cold turkey and it hurts and they're mean to him Mommy and make them stop....Hahahahahaha
Bonehead's bad at his job, Bonehead's bad at his job, na na na na na na.....
they can take their plan B plot along with their fiscal cliff and put it where the sun don't shine.
Amazing. Adding a tax bracket is giving people a tax cut. I still haven't seen how that works yet. Must be like the spending cuts that are really slower rates of increase.
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/numbers/displayatab.cfm?Docid=3750&DocTypeID=2
aw, shoots, more baseless claims about things and still unable to express what the hell your current conspiracy theory is. Shoots, explain why you used that link and please do tell us what you think it says.
I'll try one more time. Everyone is getting a tax cut right now. These cuts expire at the end of the year, 2 years later than designed. Under the original Obama plan, 98% of Americans keep those cuts. In order to close the deficit, he wants everyone making more than $250,000 to pay higher rates on the income above that. Under the Boehner plan, people would continue getting cuts up to a million dollars, plus cuts to cap gains, dividends, interest, etc., that are also expiring would be made permanent. This means that under the Boehner plan, people making between that $250 and a million keep costing the government in tax cuts, receiving an average of about $50K more in cuts than under the Obama plan.
Velkyn, after looking at Shooters link, I believe what he was referring to is the increased tax break that the 95-99% will get under Boehner's plan "B"(note that it is Boehner's tax bracket that is getting the added tax break.
I'm trying to understand whether you're very stupid, or just a partisan hack. Hm. In the hopes that you're open to information (doubtful), or at least to prevent people from being swayed by your misinformation, allow me to explain:
First off, yes, adding a bracket is a tax cut, because as VeryVerySad explains, under current law, all the tax cuts and brackets revert to the pre-01/03 levels. By retaining most of the brackets, the law would change from what it's projected to be, constituting a tax cut for most Americans. But by permitting the upper brackets to revert, those taxes don't actually go up (unless you THEN limited deductions and other itemized portions of the code), they simply proceed as planned---a process known as 'decoupling', in budgetary parlance. This is also why the President has the upper hand in negotiating, the decoupling would happen anyway: taxes would rise on everyone, forcing a vote to lower rates for the bottom 98%, and by not touching the upper 2% of earners' rates, technically we get more revenue without actually "raising" taxes, as far as the law is concerned. It's a little sketchy, I admit, but it's the reality of the negotiations.
Second, YES CHANGING BENEFITS CALCULATIONS IS A SPENDING CUT. I happen to be a liberal who thinks, like the CBPP and Center for American Progress, that there are ways to go about it that shield the most vulnerable, but still cut benefits. It's simple: the calculation is what tells the government to pay out. Changing that calculation so the result is lower means the resulting payout would be lower. Ta-da, less spending. If 2+x=5, but x=3. Make x = 2, and the sum is now 4. The sum is lower because the variable changed. I lack anything simpler than that to tell you that it is, in fact, a cut.
Eric-
Thank you for the backup. The only reason I ever respond to Shooter is for the reason you mention; if anyone who doesn't know better reads his misinformation, unless there's a simple and easy to understand response, they might think Shooter's posts are accurate.
VVS -
You call it a tax cut if you like but it remains that current rates have been in place for a decade. Hell, if you want to get technical on me they're really Obama's tax rates/cuts now. Not Bush's.
Increasing taxes on the $250k crowd does not close the deficit. It gets you, $82 Billion, leaving us still a trillion in more debt. It isn't even enough to cover three months of the payroll taxcut. In reality it's just a punishment for being successful.
And I'm still looking to see where that $50k cut is coming from.
http://taxfoundation.org/article/summary-latest-federal-individual-income-tax-data-0#table1
I've explained 3 times, and the link you sent has little to do with our conversation. You need to actually break millionaires out from the tabs of the chart you linked to earlier, which takes a basic understanding of tax law, the two proposals and a calculator.
I'm beginning to think that you are really a liberal who's just playing the part of a Conservative to make Conservatives look bad. No one could follow the pattern you do so regularly without doing it on purpose.
Bravo. You really had me convinced that you were real for a while. Congratulations for playing it so well.
can we agree that none of this matters?? it doesn't matter how many brackets there are, it doesn't matter what the marginal rates are, and this has nothing to do with business, small or otherwise!!! stop looking at the shiny ball ...
what matters is the definitions section.
an example: you know whose taxes won't go up under plan b? willard mitt romney's. you know why?
he has no income!!!! none.
you know who cares about income??? you and me ... people without wealth.
and as for business -- if you are a subchapter S or a partnership (the most relevant categories since plan b is not about the corporate tax codes) ...
all that could, in any hypothetical regarding this crap, is your whatever net profits your accountant is too stupid to not find a way to expense, reinvest in the business, defer or any one of 2 million other allowable way to make $$$ invisible to the irs and falls down thru as income ...
and if it's much greater than zero --- your checks to your accountant are charitable contributions, not business expenses
ok, nasty tone stopping now ... sorry ... i'll play nice
VVS - Yeah, I thought you were real too. Oh well.
Shooter-
Compared to current law, the cut for those making more than a million is $108,500.
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3878
Well I see part of the problem. When I hear "current law" I think current rates. When you hear "current" law you think Clinton rates. which are not the rates we have currently, yes?
So what we really have here is still no spending cuts, Bush rates plus a millionaires bracket, and also an extension of voiding the Pease provision. Like I said originally....
Shooter the problem is that is not enough revenue but will be held as all the revenue he would allow and then he would try to use that faux plan as leverage at the debt limit discussions to attack spending. Or to be more honest, I think that people making $250k-$1mil should pay the Clinton rates both for the measly $82 billion (I know, who cares about any number in the billions right? CHUMPCHANGE) but I simply thing it's right. Call it "class warfare" if you want, doesn't make me flinch and I'm hoping to be on the receiving end of those higher rates wtihin the next decade. That we should all be so lucky as to have higher tax rate problems.
Last time, Shooter. Boehner's offer is not a higher effective rate when factoring in all of the other pieces of the plan. It results in lower taxes paid, not higher. That is why it got Grover's okay. It was basically a conservative wishlist, and even that wasn't enough for the crazies who still think they are voting on raising taxes, not preventing imminent and inevitable hikes.
It seems the issue is moot this morning. Looks like we'll find out what's over the fiscal cliff after all.
Pretty soon, the GOP will be found in the Library of Congress archives, examining the 1890 Acts of Congress. . .
What the tea-party Republicans really want is to destroy the Federal government. "Starve the beast until we can drown it in a bathtub."
I suggest that all those who want to do away with the Federal government along with all those who want to tote guns everywhere, move to Syria or the Congo or Lybia. Those countries show what happens when there is either a weak government or a tyrannical government which cannot serve its people. The function of government is to define boundries, and it costs money to have effective government.
Boehner seems to be totally disassocated from reality.
No, he's totally associated with a reality that he helped create.
Karma is such a bitch.
So is self respect. Do you have any , Mr Speaker?
Nope, and therefore no one respects him. You get what you give.
Why doesn't Boehner finally get the message that you can't work with these people if you want to accomplish anything beneficial to the country? If he keeps going the way he has been, his place in history as the most incompetent Speaker of the House ever is assured. He would be much better off just making a public announcement that he is sick of trying to raise a bunch of spoiled brats and is quitting so someone else can take care of them. Eric Cant is the logical replacement and if he were elected Speaker either he would be a total farce thereby erasing memory of Boehner, or he would have to change his course 180º and drag his mates with him.
You want the real joke? That he can't even round up twenty rational Republicans.
I am beginning to think that Eric Cantor should replace Boehner. He will quickly discover that it is hard to be a revolutionary firebrand when you are required to actually do stuff.
intersection of [rational] and [Republican] = the null set
"Rational Republican" is an oxymoron.
No, it is a flat out republican lie.......Rational? Give me a break!
Boehner's "new and improved" version of his Plan B nonsense is one more reason to simply let the "fiscal cliff" happen.
We will patch together something once all this mess is cleared out of the way.
And Boehner and his fellow Republicans continue to guarantee that they will lose - big time - in the 2014 election cycle.
Thus giving Obama his last two years to create the kind of Democratic legacy that really, really scares the Republicans.
Oh, I love it that CNBC thinks that by passing Plan B, it will force Obama to come to the Republicans. They see it as "a major concession" to Obama which ,of course, Obama will have to reciprocate! And when you think about what CNBC stands for, you can see why the stock market is so gleeful!
http://www.cnbc.com/id/100331810
The only people who will actually NOT have their taxrate go up is that group of people who earn between $200,000 and $1,000,000 (and what smart rich person CAN'T get their adjusted gross down to below $1,000,000?). EVERYONE else's taxes would go up, especially the low income earners! YEP, CNBC is THRILLED that Congress is finally going to get those nasty lazy poor people to pay higher taxes one way or another!
If Obama falls for this BS, there is no hope for any of us!!!
Interesting. Don't most congress-critters make between $200,000 - $1,000,000?
Yep!
it isn't just the salary they get from being in Congress - it is also all the "investments" they have which just seem to skyrocket when they get in Congress.
Kernen, Santelli and the rest of their ilk on CNBC are nothing more than spokesmen for the 1%. All you see on that channel are people like Jack Welch complaining that their taxes are to high and "entitlements" need to be cut. You can just about hear Kernen sizziling whenever Warren Buffet appears on the program. The only one I care for is Becky Quick,she does'nt seem to be as partisan as the rest. But I wo'nt watch CNBC for one person. Whenever I tune in to find out what the market is doing, I mute my TV.
I looked at this website and see that Plan B would be HORRIBLE, especially for people in my tax bracket! (which is not very high).
If you really want to see what the rich are thinking, CNBC is the place to go. If you want to see how little empathy they have for anyone else, watch Kudrow!
Even Forbes is saying how ridiculous "Plan B" is!
http://www.forbes.com/sites/beltway/2012/12/20/weird-turn-on-fiscal-cliff-gop-plan-would-hike-taxes-on-working-class-so-high-income-people-can-pay-less/
It's like watching a drunk get up and fall down again. The whole frickin' Republican Party is punch drunk and looking more silly all the time. Who would have ever known that Bachmann was the sane one?
You would think that it would be unfathomable to, in the same breath, propose to gut aid to the poor while simultaneously aiding Wall St., but not with this bunch. Boehner's next ploy will be to add loopholes so that the tax increase will apply to virtually no one.
If Boehner can't get them to sign off on raising tax rates above $1M, how will his caucus ever approve of any tax proposal of Obama's? This should make it clear to the Democrats that we need to go over the cliff so that the Republicans can feel the pressure from business owners (they don't really care what the constituents think) to actually do their jobs.
i've never understood how the typical republican can be so solicitous of a fetus and so indifferent to the wails of a hungry child. i guess its just me.
No, Jim, it's not just you. It's most of us here.
Are they drinking out of lead chalices again? Pathetic.
gop used to be honorable...now they are just scrooge on steroids
What a tax raise to that upper bracket, even 250 and above, even if it didnt improve the economy, it certainly will not crush it but the Pubs would rather crush the middle class and drop our credit rating than tax themselves.
I certainly hope the president dosnt give in. He shouldnt even give in on the 250 number now. Everything resets and you sign it as it sits or you lose it all anyway.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/declare-tea-party-and-congressional-republicans-domestic-terrorists-bent-economic-ruin-united-states/ZgRLQGqN
When are you going to get rid of these people? Organise a street protest and tell them: do your job or we fire you!! You, the People are in charge. YOU may their salaries.
Any business with this kind of dysfuction would have fired them long ago.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/declare-tea-party-and-congressional-republicans-domestic-terrorists-bent-economic-ruin-united-states/ZgRLQGqN
I agree with the comments that see that the underlying objective within the ranks of Republicans (co-opted radical right, don't deserve the name conservative) is to destroy government here.
This Speaker simply cannot control his caucus, and it is beginning to look as though the caucus itself is dysfunctional. Not every Republican in the House is willing to harm the country for the sake of ideological purity, yet many in the House insist on it.
We may be witnessing the demise of the Republican Party as a national party.
Boehner wins the prize! He is the most spineless human being snaking around the soil of the earth, leaving a trail of slime everywhere he goes.
Interesting, tdub, and considering that many of the GOP are on record as plotting against the President--read the book DO NOT ASK WHAT GOOD WE DO--they ARE traitors to the Constitution. Further, they campaigned on JOBS. JOBS, JOBS and in 2 years created not a single one thus breaking their own oath of office AND their Oath to serve the People.
What more do you need?
When Speaker Spray Tan's 'Plan B' is designed more to appease elements in his own party than it being a 'grand compromise', lets just face facts. The GOP's complete and total inability to understand the word COMPROMISE is going to lead us over the 'fiscal cliff'.
it was this very same stupidity barely a year ago that caused the US to lose its AAA credit rating. Common sense seems to have left the Capitol Beltway. I guess its time to start using my favorite twitter hashtag again,
#GOPEpicFail
Edit: better yet.. lets remind them that WE are in charge, and expand the 22nd amendment to include the legislative branch as well
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/introduce-constitutional-amendment-expanding-22nd-amendment-legislative-branch/yzWwm006
The entirety of the GOP is the ghost of Hoover past...the Grossly Onerous Party.