Skip to main content

GOP's $4.6T 'fiscal cliff' counterproposal rebuffed

House Republicans sent a counterproposal to avert the "fiscal cliff" to the White House on Monday outlining a $4.6 trillion deficit reduction proposal without raising tax rates.
President Obama and Senate Democrats have said that without a deal to raise tax rates on the wealthiest Americans there is no path forward to avert the fiscal cliff at the end of the year when George W. Bush-era tax rates expire and $1.2 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years are triggered.
The Republicans' proposal is based on a framework outlined last year by former Clinton White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles, who co-chaired Obama's debt commission, and included an increase in the eligibility age for Medicare benefits. Republicans did not offer specific language on raising the age in their proposal, but Bowles has supported raising the age to 67. Boehner called it a "la-la land offer" on Monday.

Obama and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, also discussed gradually raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67 during their unsuccessful talks on deficit reduction in 2011.
"What we're putting forth is a credible plan that deserves serious consideration by the White House and I would hope that they would respond in a timely and responsible way," Boehner told reporters.
The GOP offer is in response to a White House plan presented to congressional leaders last week by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, which was dismissed by GOP leaders who said its $1.6 trillion request for new tax revenue without comparable spending cuts or entitlement changes was an unserious proposal.
The House GOP plan received a similar reception Monday from White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer, who said the Republican plan "does not meet the test of balance. In fact, it actually promises to lower rates for the wealthy and sticks the middle class with the bill. Their plan includes nothing new and provides no details on which deductions they would eliminate, which loopholes they will close or which Medicare savings they would achieve. Independent analysts who have looked at plans like this one have concluded that middle class taxes will have to go up to pay for lower rates for millionaires and billionaires."
Bowles also took issue with the House plan.
"While I'm flattered the Speaker would call something 'the Bowles plan,' the approach outlined in the letter Speaker Boehner sent to the president does not represent the Simpson-Bowles plan, nor is it the Bowles plan," Bowles said in a statement released Monday afternoon.
"Every offer put forward brings us closer to a deal, but to reach an agreement, it will be necessary for both sides to move beyond their opening positions and reach agreement on a comprehensive plan which avoids the fiscal cliff and puts the debt on a clear downward path relative to the economy," Bowles' statement said.
At Monday's briefing at the White House, spokesman Jay Carney said: "What the president believes is that you cannot mathematically achieve the kinds of revenue that are necessary for that balanced approach through any other means. So rates have to rise. And the Republicans need to acknowledge ... that's the only way to get from here to there."
The House Republicans' proposal was short on specifics but calls for $800 billion in new revenue achieved through closing loopholes and capping deductions; $900 billion in health care and other mandatory spending cuts; $300 billion in spending cuts for discretionary spending, which includes social programs such as food stamps; and $200 billion gained by changing the way the government calculates cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security and Medicare.
The GOP plan achieves enough in deficit reduction to turn off the $1.2 trillion automatic spending cuts at the end of the year to resolve that component of the "fiscal cliff," two senior GOP congressional aides said. They spoke anonymously because they weren't authorized to speak publicly about the details of the proposal.
The GOP plan does not include any proposal on how to raise the debt ceiling, which is another non-starter for the White House which wants to use the fiscal cliff negotiations to include an agreement to raise the debt ceiling in February when the U.S. is expected to hit its $16.4 trillion borrowing limit. The president wants to avoid another debt limit fight with congressional Republicans like the one that rattled Wall Street in the summer of 2011.
Boehner will attend a holiday reception at the White House tonight. Asked if he would discuss his proposal with the president he quipped: "I might run in to him."

READ THE FULL STORY HERE.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Siege - A Poem By Ahmad Faraz Against The Dictatorship Of Zia Ul Haq

Related Posts: 1.  Did Muhammad Ali Jinnah Want Pakistan To Be A Theocracy Or A Secular State? 2. The Relationship Between Khadim & Makhdoom In Pakistan 3. Battle for God; Battleground Pakistan - a time has finally come to call a spade a spade 4. Pakistan - Facing Contradictory Strategic Choices In An Uncertain Region 5. Pakistan, Islamic Terror & General Zia-Ul-Haq 6. Why Pakistan Army Must Allow The Democracy To Flourish In Pakistan & Why Pakistanis Must Give Democracy A Chance? 7. A new social contract in Pakistan between the Pakistani Federation and its components 8. Birth of Bangladesh / Secession of East Pakistan & The Sins of Our Fathers 9. Pakistan Army Must Not Intervene In The Current Crisis - Who To Blame For the Present Crisis in Pakistan ? 10. Balochistan - Troubles Of A Demographic Nature

India: The Terrorists Within

A day after major Indian cities were placed on high alert following blasts in the IT city of Bangalore, as many as 17 blasts ripped through Ahmedabad, capital of the affluent western Indian state of Gujarat . Some 30 people were killed, some at hospitals where bombs were timed to go off when the injured from other blasts were being brought in. (Later, in Surat, a center for the world's diamond industry, a bomb was defused near a hospital and two cars packed with explosives were found in in the city's outskirts.) Investigators pointed fingers at the usual Islamist suspects: Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), Bangladesh- based Harkat-ul Jihadi Islami (HUJI) and the indigenous Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). But even as the police searched for clues, the Ahmedabad attacks were owned up by a group calling itself the " Indian Mujahideen. " Several TV news stations received an email five minutes before the first blasts in Ahmedabad. The message repo

Mir Chakar Khan Rind - A Warrior Hero Of Baluchistan & Punjab Provinces of Pakistan

By Sikander Hayat The areas comprising the state of Pakistan have a rich history and are steeped in the traditions of martial kind. Tribes which are the foundation stone of Pakistan come from all ethnic groups of Pakistan either they be Sindhi, Balochi, Pathan or Punjabi. One of these men of war & honour were Mir Chakar Khan Rind. He is probably the most famous leader coming out of Baloch ethnic group of Pakistan. Mir Chakar Khan Rind or Chakar-i-Azam (1468 – 1565 ) was a Baloch king and ruler of Satghara in (Southern Pakistani Punjab) in the 15th century. He is considered a folk hero of the Baloch people and an important figure in the Baloch epic Hani and Sheh Mureed. Mir Chakar lived in Sibi in the hills of Balochistan and became the head of Rind tribe at the age of 18 after the death of his father Mir Shahak Khan. Mir Chakar's kingdom was short lived because of a civil war between the Lashari and Rind tribes of Balochistan. Mir Chakar and Mir Gwaharam Khan Lashari, hea