Archives for January 2013

After exploring the possibility of adding spending cuts to the Senate-passed bill to limit tax hikes caused by the “fiscal cliff,” the House Republican leadership abandoned that strategy and ultimately passed the bill unamended, the New York Times reports.

The final vote was 257 to 167.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) voted against the measure, as did House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) voted in favor.

President Obama is expected to sign the bill into law shortly.

Wonk Wire has a summary of what’s included in the deal.

House Republicans “reacted with anger” to a Senate-passed plan to head off automatic tax increases and spending cuts, “putting the fate of the legislation in doubt just hours after it appeared Congress was nearing a resolution of the fiscal crisis,” the New York Times reports.

Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) “indicated to his colleagues in a closed-door meeting in the basement of the Capitol that he could not support the legislation in its current form.”

Speaker John Boehner “was mainly listening to the complaints of his rank and file and had not taken a firm position on the legislation… He has said repeatedly that he would allow a vote on the Senate bill, but he has also said he did not want to pass a bill with predominantly Democratic votes.”

Politico: “A carefully-crafted Senate compromise to avert the fiscal cliff could be in jeopardy, as House Republicans seem nearly certain to tweak the legislation and send it back to the Senate because it doesn’t contain sufficient spending cuts…”

“But amending the bill and trying to send it back to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) would be a legislative high-wire act of the first order. Boehner and his leadership would have to find a way to get 217 votes for the altered package — and then hope the Senate goes along. Senate sources are warning that the upper chamber will not take up a House-amended bill.”

President Obama’s fiscal cliff deal with Republicans “has touched off a fresh wave of grievance among disappointed liberals who complained that he caved in on taxes and sent a signal that he would ultimately surrender on other priorities as he prepared to open his second term,” the New York Times reports.

“While most Democratic senators went along with the compromise in an early-morning vote on Tuesday, activists, labor leaders and liberal economists issued a harsh barrage against the deal. The president, they said, squandered his election victory by allowing too many wealthy Americans to keep income and estate tax cuts that otherwise would have expired.”

Meanwhile, Senate Democratic leaders tell The Hill they will “reject any House effort to amend a fiscal cliff deal that passed the upper chamber with overwhelming support on New Year’s Day.”

Said one Democratic aide: “We’re done.”

In fact, ABC News reports Senators have already left town.

“We should not take a package put together by a bunch of octogenarians on New Year’s Eve.”

— Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-OH), quoted by the Washington Post, referring to Vice President Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) who crafted the fiscal cliff agreement.

Get ready for the next phase of the budget fight with Slash the Deficit for the iPhone.

“We’re going to get blamed and about two weeks into this, we’ll fold like a cheap suit… Save your powder for the debt ceiling fight.”

— Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), quoted by Politico, urging House Republicans to back the fiscal cliff compromise when it comes up for a vote.

Noam Scheiber: “I think the president made a huge mistake by negotiating over what he’d previously said was non-negotiable (namely, the expiration of the Bush tax cuts on income over $250,000). Then the White House compounded that mistake by sending Biden to ‘close’ the deal when Harry Reid appeared to give up on it. As a practical matter, this signaled to Republicans that the White House wouldn’t walk away from the bargaining table, allowing the GOP to keep extracting concessions into the absolute final hours before the deadline.”

Paul Krugman: “Anyone looking at these negotiations, especially given Obama’s previous
behavior, can’t help but reach one main conclusion: whenever the
president says that there’s an issue on which he absolutely, positively
won’t give ground, you can count on him, you know, giving way — and
soon, too. The idea that you should only make promises and threats you
intend to make good on doesn’t seem to be one that this particular
president can grasp.”

Ryan Lizza: “My view is more charitable to the White House. Obama approached this
phase of the fiscal wars as the fight over revenue and (seemingly) has
reached a reasonable compromise. With a slew of previously temporary
pieces of the tax code now locked in, the White House insists it will go
into the next phase of negotiations with a stronger hand. Republicans
will be stripped of the political power of calling for tax cuts, and
instead will be in the unpopular position of mostly insisting on cuts to
Medicare and Social Security, which they are often loathe to actually
detail. And their response if Obama won’t reduce benefits to the two
most popular government programs? They will allow the United States to
default and perhaps plunge the world economy into recession.”

The budget deal hammered out late last night and passed overwhelmingly by the Senate early this morning now heads for a vote in the House of Representatives.

The Hill reports it’s still unclear how House Republicans will react, “especially given that the deal essentially avoids the $109 billion in
planned spending cuts, and offsets that delay with some cuts and new tax
revenue.”

GOP aides tell Politico that the wide bipartisan vote in the Senate “would ease the bill’s passage
through the House, but hurdles still remain. It remains to be seen
whether House Republicans try to amend the package — a tactic that would
surely sink the deal.”

Howard Kurtz: “It could be that the two parties
will wrap this up quickly, making the technical failure to meet the
self-imposed deadline a mere historical footnote. But the Obama
Democrats and Boehner Republicans have proven time and again that they
are capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.”

“Maybe now we are all believers of trickle-down economics. Not I.”

— Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), quoted by the Wall Street Journal, announcing he would not support the fiscal cliff compromise worked out last night.

“The Senate, in a pre-dawn vote two hours after the deadline passed to avert automatic tax increases, overwhelmingly approved legislation Tuesday that would allow tax rates to rise only on affluent Americans while temporarily suspending sweeping, across-the-board spending cuts,” the New York Times reports.

The deal passed 89-8, “with just three Democrats and five Republicans voting no. Although it lost the support of some of the Senate’s most conservative members, the broad coalition that pushed the accord across the finish line could portend swift House passage as early as New Year’s Day.”

The Wall Street Journal notes one of the most strident opponents was Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) who “declared the compromise benefited the wealthiest Americans at the expense of those who could afford it the least.”

The other seven senators voting against the bill: were Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL).

Wonk Wire summarizes the key features of the deal.