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Published Thursday, Dec. 27, 2012 | 8:30 a.m.
Updated Thursday, Dec. 27, 2012 | 12:46 p.m.
Barack Obama
Harry Reid
John Boehner
Sun coverage
WASHINGTON — A last-gasp effort Thursday to avoid automatic tax increases and spending cuts got off on the same convulsive, partisan tone that marked congressional attempts to resolve the impasse before lawmakers headed home for Christmas.
With a Dec. 31 deadline for an agreement to avert the so-called "fiscal cliff" rapidly approaching, leaders in each party demanded the other side take the initiative. The new flare-up happened despite a round of calls President Barack Obama made to congressional leaders by phone Wednesday night from Hawaii before he boarded Air Force One to head home from vacation.
In a potential sign of movement, Republican leaders planned to bring the House back into session on Sunday evening. But what legislation they would act on, if anything, remained unclear.
The market was glum, with stocks falling for the fourth day in a row amid the stalled negotiations and a report that consumer confidence had plunged to its lowest level since August.
Obama arrived back in Washington in late morning, not long after Majority Leader Harry Reid took to the Senate floor to chastise House Republicans who last week opposed Speaker John Boehner's efforts to pass a narrowly crafted bill. Boehner's "Plan B" would have raised tax rates only on the very wealthiest Americans. But the opposition within his own party caucus forced the Ohio Republican to cancel a vote on the bill.
Reid charged Thursday that the House was "being operated with a dictatorship of the speaker."
"John Boehner seems to care more about keeping his speakership than about keeping the nation on sound financial footing," the Nevada Democrat said on the Senate floor.
Upon returning from a brief vacation, Obama faced what has become a familiar eleventh-hour scenario — one the GOP says is his fault — and even a stopgap solution was in doubt.
Without congressional action, current tax rates will expire on Dec. 31, resulting in a $536 billion tax increase that would touch nearly all Americans. Moreover, the military and other federal departments would have to cut $110 billion in spending.
But while economists have warned about the economic impact of tax hikes and spending cuts of that magnitude, both sides are increasingly proceeding as if Congress could still act in January in time to retroactively counter the effect on most taxpayers and government agencies without causing economic harm.
The issue has been Obama's first test of muscle after his re-election in November. Obama ran on a theme of having the wealthy pay a greater share toward deficit reduction with a focus on raising upper tax rates for individuals earning $200,000 or more and couples making more than $250,000. In negotiations with Boehner toward a deficit reduction plan of more than $2 trillion over 10 years, he offered to increase that threshold to $400,000, but those negotiations collapsed.
House GOP leaders this week put the burden on Reid, urging him in a statement Wednesday to take up a House-passed bill that would extend current tax rates to all taxpayers, a bill Obama has vowed to veto.
Reacting to Reid's floor remarks Thursday, Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck said: "Harry Reid should talk less and legislate more if he wants to avert the fiscal cliff. The House has already passed legislation to do so."
The White House said Obama, before leaving Hawaii, called Boehner, Reid, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. The White House statement said the president got an update on the "fiscal negotiations," but offered no detail on who, exactly, was negotiating and whether those talks were getting anywhere.
McConnell's office said Obama's phone call was the first from a Democrat on the fiscal cliff since Thanksgiving.
Last Friday, Obama and Reid voiced support for a proposal that would extend current rates to individuals earning up to $200,000 and families earning up to $250,000. Taxpayers above those thresholds would see their top rates rise. The proposal would have included extended aid to unemployed workers and some surgical cuts to avoid steeper and broader spending cuts.
For the Senate to act, it would require a commitment from McConnell not to demand a 60-vote margin to consider the legislation on the Senate floor. McConnell's office says it's too early to make such an assessment because Democrats have not put forward a specific plan and have been unclear on whether extended benefits for the unemployed would be paid for with cuts in other programs or on how it would deal with an expiring estate tax, among other issues.
The questions hanging over Washington Thursday centered on whether Reid would offer a specific piece of legislation, whether McConnell would allow it to proceed to a vote on the Senate floor and, if the Senate bill passed, whether Boehner would schedule a House vote on it. All those issues remained unresolved, and success before the end of the year appeared a long shot at best.
Reid said the GOP-controlled House easily could have passed a White House-approved plan with a majority of Democratic votes and a few dozen Republican votes. But House leaders generally avoid such tactics, because they might alienate the Republican caucus and jeopardize the speaker's job.
The House has passed a Republican plan to avert the fiscal cliff, and the Senate has passed a Democratic version. Their deficit-reduction projections differ by hundreds of billions of dollars over 10 years.
Adding to the mix of developments pushing toward a "fiscal cliff," Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Wednesday informed Congress that the government was on track to hit its borrowing limit on Monday and said he would take "extraordinary measures as authorized by law" to postpone a government default.
Still, Geithner added, uncertainty about the outcome of negotiations over taxes and spending made it difficult to determine how much time those measures would buy.
Did anyone really expect any other outcome from Comedy Central?
Never has so few screwed things up for so many.
Get out the parachutes because come Monday here we goooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And the DOW is falling!
This is just plain sad.
The Republicans have lost the PR war and Obama has lost the reality war.
Nice to see that their own personal interests (big donors) trump those of the people of the US.
Ah well, we survived the Mayan apocalypse..... How much worse can this be??
This isn't really getting the news coverage it deserves in the press at large. I fear that our country men are more interested in facebook than the future.
it's not worth it- the Democrats shouldn't have to give away the New Deal. W's tax cuts were a trojan horse which defunded the government. The only real solutions are liberal ones.
The Republican Party is self destructing by a small number of radicals and
the timidity of the rest. This is as irresponsible as one can be.
No! No! No Compromise! Just say NO! All of you, even you liberals, know the economy is doing terrible! If we want America to get better we must cut taxes and cut spending! We TeaPublicans said NO to that guy obama his first four years of office and we WILL say NO his second four years! Just remember our TeaPublican battle cry "Just Say NO!". Every Republican legislator has been informed that if they compromise at all that TeaPublicans, along with the support of FoxNews, Rush Limbaugh, Koch Brothers and all AM Radio talk shows, will make sure those that compromise"any IMPURE Republicans, WILL get defeated in the next primary election! By working together, we have frightened Republicans into doing the RIGHT thing! We will not put up with treason! WE control the Republican Party! Republican legislators like they jobs and want to keep them. They don't want to look back and regret the day they cast a vote that ended their political careers! We TeaPublicans WILL take back America in 2014 and 2016".THEN you WILL see America move forward! Merry Christmas obama, hope you enjoyed your lump of coal! Bahahahaha!
"We TeaPublicans said NO to that guy Obama his first four years of office and we WILL say NO his second four years! Just remember our TeaPublican battle cry 'Just Say NO!'. Every Republican legislator has been informed that if they compromise at all that TeaPublicans, along with the support of FoxNews, Rush Limbaugh, Koch Brothers and all AM Radio talk shows, will make sure those that compromise any IMPURE Republicans, WILL get defeated in the next primary election!"
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Obama doesn t have to worry about getting re-elected, but Republicans in the House and Senate do, a reality based Republican could see that, but..
Bring on the cliff, i wanna see Tea fearin Republican politicians fall on their swords for the uber rich.
@TeaPublicanPatriot. Wow. What the heck is in your cup of hot chocolate?
Anyway, GOP - Grand Ostrich Party.
Jump Harry, jump.
Jump off the cliff
Atta boy, Harry
Good Doggie
Going over this so-called cliff will cut spending and raise income. Isn't that exactly what we all say we want? Isn't that what the morons in DC say they want?
Realistically, we have zero hope of ever being great again. We've gone from a nation of hard workers with a great work ethic and a huge sense of right and wrong to one of useless, lazy bums who have zero work ethic and a mentality of government handouts for everything. There is a big difference between helping out those in trouble for a short time and simply supporting people for years or even decades. Sadly, liberals cannot see the difference and they believe that we CAN keep spending a trillion dollars more than we take in every year. Their absurd answer is tax the rich. This of course would run the government for about a week. I realize that us affluent folks (top 10%) already pay 75% of the total federal taxes, but I guess that's not enough for the flamers on the left. Gosh, perhaps I should pay 99% of my income so you can sit on your rear end and watch TV all day.
If the takers represented 10-15% of the population, we could handle it. Since we support about half the entire population with hundreds of social PC programs, it is unsustainable. We will go down the toilet within a few years and those on the public dole will start getting zero. Then the doo-doo will hit the fan.
There is no cliff. "Cliff" implies non reversible. Once you jump, you jump. Truth be told they could very well and likely will get a deal a few days after. Big deal. There is no cliff to speak of as its all reversible with zero damage a few days later. The news loves a good ratings story.
I am having trouble trying to figure out if teapublican is being serious or if it is a dem posting as a teaperson trying to make conservatives look bad. Really that is how ignorant you sound.
As for me, I guess it is time to pull the stocks and mutual funds and go money market until the storm blows over. What a pain both sides are causing.
"As for me, I guess it is time to pull the stocks and mutual funds and go money market until the storm blows over. What a pain both sides are causing."
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well, if you did that earlier today you missed a very nice surge in stocks in the final 2 hours. I thought the markets would get hit a lot harder (and maybe they will) but they seem to be holding up pretty good thru the month. Again, this "cliff" talk is nonsense. "Cliff" implies that once you go over you crash and burn. That is simply not the case as the politicians can reconvene on Jan. 2nd and hammer out a deal (which is likely what will happen). The word "cliff" is used for dramatic effect, nothing else. It has no meaning because everything is reversible. If this was truly a cliff you wouldn't be able to do that...a day later.
"Their absurd answer is tax the rich. This of course would run the government for about a week."
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Actually is would cover at least 85-90% of the yearly cost of Veterans health care, and since the uber rich never serve, this will be how the uber rich can actually support the troops.
"If this was truly a cliff you wouldn't be able to do that...a day later."
I beg to differ ... as Nancy Pelosi said "But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what's in it"
That is typical Democrat philosophy on how to run the government.
We need leaders that can prevent this disaster, not attempt to put out fires or "hammer" out a patch after the fact!
So much for moving forward, Ehh?
There's no disaster. You'll wait an extra day or 2 for an agreement. Where Nancy Pelosi fits in is beyond me. This is a Boehner and Teapublican issue. They can't even agree among their own party on what to put forward. Put something is writing, pass it and send it up to Obama. If he says no, then do the press conference thing and say "we did our best". What Boehner is doing is dumb and he will get blamed. PUT a plan in writing and submit it!! Right now Boehner has submitted nothing. It's all talk right now. The republicans will get beat up...again. They have got to put it in writing and pass it themselves. What happens after that is meaningless. They did their best.
Markey its still only about a weeks worth of spending no matter where you apply the dollars.