Yesterday, John Boehner appeared to wave a white flag on talks aimed at resolving the fiscal cliff. Harry Reid reacted to that with disappointment,
saying that there’s still time for a deficit reduction deal. But the
real endgame – at least for the lame duck session – is coming into focus.
More troubling is that we don’t know where those $55 billion in cuts will come from. Specifically, will they include any tax increases? So far, all of the deficit reduction agreed to, mainly from the spending cap and the sequester, which would drive down discretionary funding to levels so low that the federal court system would have to stop jury trials because they could not pay the jurors, has come on the spending side of the ledger. Nothing has come from the tax side. Saxby Chambliss, one of the leaders of this “Gang of 8″ effort in the Senate, said that the $55 billion down payment would “not necessarily” include revenues. (The other members of the group are Democrats Mark Warner, Kent Conrad, Dick Durbin and Michael Bennet, with Republicans Chambliss, Mike Crapo, Tom Coburn and Lamar Alexander.)
Read more: http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/09/12/gang-of-eight-discusses-six-month-punt-for-fiscal-cliff/
You can totally see this happening, right? The $55 billion would be enough to stop the sequester of defense and discretionary cuts for six months. That would give the breathing space needed for a longer discussion. The calculus may change depending on the outcome of the elections. But it’s clearly easier to get to $55 billion than $1.2 trillion, which is the ten-year cost of the sequester.A bipartisan group of senators is negotiating a roughly $55 billion debt “down payment” that would temporarily turn off automatic spending cuts and buy Congress at least six months to work out a bigger deal.
The down payment would be linked to a deficit-reduction framework that would bind committees with jurisdiction over spending and taxes to an action plan, say sources familiar with the negotiations.
If a deal is reached and leaders sign off on it, Congress could approve the plan in a lame-duck session.
More troubling is that we don’t know where those $55 billion in cuts will come from. Specifically, will they include any tax increases? So far, all of the deficit reduction agreed to, mainly from the spending cap and the sequester, which would drive down discretionary funding to levels so low that the federal court system would have to stop jury trials because they could not pay the jurors, has come on the spending side of the ledger. Nothing has come from the tax side. Saxby Chambliss, one of the leaders of this “Gang of 8″ effort in the Senate, said that the $55 billion down payment would “not necessarily” include revenues. (The other members of the group are Democrats Mark Warner, Kent Conrad, Dick Durbin and Michael Bennet, with Republicans Chambliss, Mike Crapo, Tom Coburn and Lamar Alexander.)
Read more: http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/09/12/gang-of-eight-discusses-six-month-punt-for-fiscal-cliff/
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