University of Louisville/flickr
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Vice President Biden
Fiscal talks took a step backwards earlier today when Republicans insisted on including chained CPI in the agreement. A Senate Democratic aide told me this afternoon, "We believed it was mutually understood that chained CPI was off the table for a smaller-scale agreement, and see Republicans' continued insistence on including it as a major setback."
Democrats held firm, and soon after, GOP members backed off -- at least on this one provision.
Negotiations over a last-ditch agreement to head off large tax increases and sweeping spending cuts in the new year appeared to resume on Sunday afternoon after Republican senators withdrew a demand that any deal must include a new way of calculating inflation that would lower payments to beneficiary programs like Social Security and slow their growth.
Senate Republicans emerged from a closed-door meeting to say they agreed with Democrats that the request -- which had temporarily brought talks to a standstill -- was not appropriate for a quick deal to avert the tax increases and spending cuts starting Jan. 1.
To hold the line against raising taxes on high-income households while fighting for cuts to Social Security was "not a winning hand," said Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona.
Imagine that. Republicans were, in effect, arguing, "We'll raise middle class taxes unless Democrats accept Social Security cuts." It would seem "not a winning hand" is an understatement.
But while the GOP's shift in posture helped keep the talks from collapsing entirely, the remaining areas of disagreement -- estate taxes, the sequester, extending jobless benefits, a debt-ceiling extension -- have not been, and may ultimately not be, resolved.
With this in mind, the stage has been set for an interesting Senate showdown tomorrow.
On the one hand, there are the ongoing efforts to reach a compromise. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had nothing more to offer Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), so the Republican has now begun negotiating with Vice President Biden.
If they can work something out -- what such an agreement might look like is hard to imagine at this point -- the bill would be brought to the Senate sometime after 11 a.m. tomorrow. And if it were to pass, the House would have a half-day, or perhaps a little less, to consider the agreement, bring to the floor, and vote on it.
On the other hand, if no Senate deal emerges, Reid will take President Obama's advice, bring the White House's original offer -- lower rates on income up to $250,000 and extended unemployment benefits -- and dare Senate Republicans to filibuster it.
And what about the House? Leaders in the lower chamber aren't saying much at this point, in large part because they have no idea what the Senate will do, but the House is already prepared to waive its three-day rule -- the measure intended to give members time to read a bill before voting on it -- and House Speaker John Boehner has already committed to both sides that he will bring to the floor any bill that passes the Senate.
We'll know a bit more by morning.
Leave a Comment:
Congress should declared the Capitol Building --- Guantanamo II, and be forced to stay there until these matters are resolved.
If we're talking about spending cuts, it seems to me that the fairest place to start would be with Congressional salaries and benefits.
It is laughable to put ANYTHING in Sen. Harry Reid's hands. He has failed us again and again over his past 4 years of "leadership" in the Senate. He has never allowed the Senate to even cast a vote on a budget in the past 4 years. Unbelievable! However, Obama prefers this....never having to sign (or adhere to a) budget......just keep on spending us into infinity with no budget or guidelines. Obama is the first president in America's long history to have never approved a budget.
Poor mike. He just blew his load. Now he's all out of FoxTalkingPoints.
Flunked 8th grade civics, did we Mike?
Phflattt ..... fizzle ... fizzle ....fizzle
The GOP won't approve the real, needed budgets, so the President's proposals never come up in the House. The crap that the House proposes on its own don't deserve the name "budget" attached to them, as they more closely resemble "we wish we'd won the election" pie-in-the-sky bullpuckey. Contrary to Mike's opinion, it's not REID who is the problem here.
mike....please google The budget Control ACt. fox doesn't talk about it, neither do Rush or Grover. there is a budget. Obama can spend nothing by himself.
Appropriations bills originate from the House.
My analogy to the "cuts in Soc. Sec. or no deal" Repub idea is --
The Repubs are holding a gun to the Dem's head and demanding that they climb on the bulldozer and help them drive while it/they push all the Grandmas over a cliff.
I hope they stand firm with, NO! I expect the American "centrist" voters are smart enough to see that.
Holding guns to people's heads is terrorism.
Steak or chicken?
This is all bull@!$%#. All they have to do is repeal the legislation that created the "fiscal cliff" in the first place. It was created by the teabaggers to try to defeat Obama; they failed and it's time to move on.
There is no fiscal cliff. No deal would be better than a bad deal. I'll never understand why the democrats and the president let the GNOP lead them around. Let's all call 202-456-1111 and tell the president to stand his ground. The office opens at 9AM.
afairhope,
I wish I could agree with you, but for people living on unemployment insurance, this is definitely a "fiscal cliff"!!
If it weren't for them, I'd be glad to go over the cliff, but there are millions of people in this country who won't have a way to live if these idiots can't get their act together - and we cannot forget about them (like Congress has!)
House Speaker John Boehner has already committed to both sides that he will bring to the floor any bill that passes the Senate.
I really don't think there is any way on New Year's Eve and with the entire country watching, that the Senate Republicans are going to filibuster the last offer bill (though never underestimate the stupidity of these people). Boehner has effectively surrendered with that statement, and it would seem that the Democrats in the House will support the bill, so there are only around 25 Republicans needed. It will be interesting to see if there are 25 of them who can see beyond the end of their wingnut noses.
"Living in 'interesting' times" as a curse, indeed.
Watch O'Connell filibuster the bill so it doesn't have to go to the house. Then Boehner doesn't have to put it to a house vote and thus saves his speakership. Then on Jan 1st, House GOP gets to vote for great big tax cut.
It's a Republican-style win-win. Happy New Year!
Those receiving unemployment benefits lose.
Those waiting on the Farm Bill and any other legislation stalled until this is resolved lose.
If this is what the GOP considers a win-win it is little wonder they cannot get the votes for their proposals. Everyone please remember this month when you are in a polling place.
Off topic but Hillary Clinton has been admitted to a NY hospital with a blood clot related to her concussion earlier this month
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2012/12/30/us/politics/ap-us-clinton.html?_r=0
People, don't get too excited. I've explained this before. Congress is Lucy Van Pelt. The American people are Charlie Brown. Lucy is swearing that THIS time she won't pull the football away......see where I'm going?
PS-Get well soon, Hillary!
Actually, the Lucy comparison more describes the GOP; they're the ones who move the goalposts if more reasonable people get too close to meeting them. Perfect examples are the current "debates" and the credit-reducing debt limit fight (where, I remind you, Boehner said that he got most of what he wanted, walking away and demanding more every time a deal got close).
No argument from me that the GOP is the party of no; but, at this particular moment, I'm sick of all of them!
Great - The GOP has stopped accelerating backwards, clearing the way for reality to bite them in the ass. Still, I doubt there will be a deal. The victimhood of the Right would be a slingshot to suicide, if they weren't so brain dead that it seemed more a mercy killing.
How do you want it to be? Starting January 15th, @10 is holding a vote on solutions that people have submitted for issues like Taxation and Corporate Influence. Submit your ideas before January 15th at www.at10us.com. In February, @10 will share your stories with the world. We will describe and distribute the most popular solutions, break out results for different locations, and highlight aspects of the issues that have the most consensus and are most contentious.
It would be fair for the congress who is causing all the problems by acting like children to lose their pay until this is resolved. They do not have a personal stake in this. That is why it is taking so long. If their pay and benefits were affected, this would be resolved within hours.
And yet...I read in several places that O just signed them a big raise.
magnoliagirl, that big raise was for $900 a year or 0.5% It's more than they deserve but not exactly huge.
As a former Fed employee, I just received notice that my retirement benefits were raised by a spectacular 1.7% over last year.
Now let me see what I can splurge on with that additional $30/month.
Tell you what, I am *celebrating* by turning the heat on today!
If we took their benifits and salaries and made them live on food stamps for a month, maybe they would stop the obstruction and work for the prople instead of the rich and teapublicans. I am tired of paying for them to live high and mighty and lease expensive cars at tax payer expense....and then want to cut medicare and SS and wellfare to those who need it the most, and those expensive lunches we have to pay for while they sit on their butts and obstruct......And I don't want to give them anything they want....go off the cliff or curb...that will hurt them more than us...they need to get busy and stop this radical crap.....2014....
Ah.........."the house will take up any bill the senate passes?" The senate passed a bill two months ago. Maybe these people should communicate. I agree that cutting their salaries would be a good place to start.
Don't blame the Democrats. They've been willing to act on this for some time. They just don't have any power to force the House to consider sensible legislation addressing whatever problem exists here. Cutting Republicans' salaries, however, would seem to be merited.
People,
merited or not,
it can't be done. It is unconstitutional, Amendment # ??.
Come on, Dems. You're this close to doing something right for one of the few times. Don't blow it now by rushing into an agreement that works against both the short- and long-term interests of the middle class.
There is no "cliff." Wait until after January 1. Beginning January 3, your bargaining position will be much stronger. In fact, it will be even better if you wait a couple of months until the Republicans want to have the silly debate over the debt ceiling.
Don't bail out the Republicans by allowing them to maneuver you into cutting entitlements or social programs. And, especially, don't allow the media to goad you into making bad policy just to feed their hysterical story lines.
The GOP/TEABAGNUTJOB'S are only on the "same page" for their "corporate" investor pals who could care less wtf happens as long as they don't get "killed" legislatively....which "we the people" DEMAND right about now... and shall till it actually friggen happens in a set of votes that makes Boehner and McConnell BOW DOWN TO THE BLACK MAN once and for all...feel me?
not quite feeling you.
Senate showdown? How does this even come to the senate they did their work months ago. The lazy house is the problem again. Anyone reminded of this scenario perhaps from the debt ceiling. Boehner made a promise, couldn't get his people together at the last minute the senators had to ride to the rescue. Pay roll tax fight?
We keep seeing this again and again the house leadership can not get anything done. Say what you will of Nancy Pelosi but this never happened under her....or really any other speaker of recent memory for that matter. Not even Newt and he was/is a real jackass.
Senate showdown? How does this even come to the senate they did their work months ago. The lazy house is the problem again. Anyone reminded of this scenario perhaps from the debt ceiling. Boehner made a promise, couldn't get his people together at the last minute the senators had to ride to the rescue. Pay roll tax fight?
We keep seeing this again and again the house leadership can not get anything done. Say what you will of Nancy Pelosi but this never happened under her....or really any other speaker of recent memory for that matter. Not even Newt and he was/is a real jackass.
So here we sit on the Eve of the cliff and I am so mad at Congress that I think we, the citizens of this country, should throw those who will not compromises out of office. I am sick to death of Republicans in all shapes and forms. They have nothing to lose so they just sit there like spoiled brats and play with our future. They will still have their comfy life style, health insurance, retirement benefits, etc. When is enough, enough? I don't think we should wait until 2014....start now. Find people who are going to represent us, not big business or their own self-interest. I wish the Speaker had to live like the rest of us for just a short time. It might improve his view point.
I don't want to hear about it any more. Citizens of our country should actually pay their fecking taxes, there I said it! The rich should pay the most, the poor, the least. Not fecking rocket science!!
I hope the cliff proves to be worth all the bullshet hype that we've had to endure these last two months.. This is dumber than the Mayan Calendar!
"Republican senators withdrew a demand that any deal must include a new way of calculating inflation that would lower payments to beneficiary programs like Social Security and slow their growth."
Which other programs "like Social Security"?
Here's how I see it.
Start thinking about what you can trim from your own personal budgets to counter the paycheck shortfall.
I have absolutely zero faith in our current "leadership" at the moment. The President can only do so much, but personally, the failure of both houses to fix this (and they had plenty of time to) is the main fault. The Republicans were so sure they were going to win, and the Democrats were timid and worried they'd lose seats.
I'm in favor of not paying them at all, until they get their @!$%# together.
Ok, I'm not from the US, so I maybe I should not write this, but... if you screw up the world's economy once a year, why not at least make it some sort of festival or holiday? It does not make any sense, it's scary, so maybe you should replace haloween by "fiscal cliff day" (and yes, someone should create a better name).
Maybe the Mayan's were right. The just had the wrong day. So do we have a fical cliff party and see what happens a midnight tonight.
America will go off the fiscal cliff solely because the Republican Party has stopped functioning as a member of this government. The GOP is a shell of a political party, existing in a fantasyland of Tea Party extremists and primaries where the most radical right winger always wins. The world of conservative politics is now so far removed from mainstream American ideals that it literally cannot coexist with rational needs and deadlines of this federal government. The only way out of this mess and out of the fiscal abyss in the new year is to find a way to dissolve the right wing nuts in the House and govern with the adults in the rest of Congress. - progressive
McConnell is 95% of the problem in Washington. Chained CPI is just another draconian way to screw those who have paid into SS all their lives. What a despicable little worm this guy is. Show him the door Joe, McConnell is not qualified to polish your shoes!
I'm pretty sure the thing with Chained-CPI, or any way to reduce benefit payments, is so the SS Fund's surpluses can be borrowed and used longer by the 1%.
welfare baby1234 banned, re-reg of multiple accounter cellarppl.
Find another site.