Super Committee

GOP's False Claim Of Proposing Higher Taxes On The Rich Spreads (VIDEO)

Brian Beutler | November 22, 2011, 2:34PM

This is how bad information spreads. Channeling Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson, Mort Zuckerman -- the billionaire real estate and media mogul -- claimed on MSNBC Tuesday that Republicans on the super committee had broken with their anti-tax orthodoxy and proposed to increase taxes, modestly, on upper income Americans.

Here's Zuckerman:

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Super Committee

Republican Acknowledges GOP Pushed Ryan Plan In Super Committee Negotiations

Brian Beutler | November 22, 2011, 12:34PM

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX)

If you're having a hard time buying that one party was more reasonable than another in the Super Committee negotiations, read Republican co-chair Jeb Hensarling's obituary for the panel in the Wall Street Journal. Specifically, check out this part about the GOP's big ask:

Democrats on the committee made it clear that the new spending called for in the president's health law was off the table. Still, committee Republicans offered to negotiate a plan on the other two health-care entitlements--Medicare and Medicaid--based upon the reforms included in the budget the House passed earlier this year....

Republicans on the committee also offered to negotiate a plan based on the bipartisan "Protect Medicare Act" authored by Alice Rivlin, one of President Bill Clinton's budget directors, and Pete Domenici, a former Republican senator from New Mexico. Rivlin-Domenici offered financial support to seniors to purchase quality, affordable health coverage in Medicare-approved plans. These seniors would be able to choose from a list of Medicare-guaranteed coverage options, similar to the House budget's approach--except that Rivlin-Domenici would continue to include a traditional Medicare fee-for-service plan among the options.

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Super Committee

Obama Issues Veto Threat On Bush Tax Cuts

Brian Beutler | November 22, 2011, 9:40AM

President Barack Obama

President Obama has threatened to veto any legislation that attempts to eliminate the automatic penalties for Super Committee failure. But on January 1, 2013 -- the same day the automatic, across the board spending cuts are scheduled to take effect -- all of the Bush tax cuts are set to expire. And the White House plans to use the threat of full expiration the exact same way they're using the threat of sequestration -- to force Republicans to accept a higher tax burden on wealthy Americans.

"He won't sign a full extension," said one Senior Administration Official at a White House background briefing for reporters on the Super Committee.

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Super Committee

FAIL: Super Committee Comes Up Empty

Brian Beutler | November 21, 2011, 4:48PM

Shutterstock/ Kajano

A whirl of last minute meetings and shuttle diplomacy weren't enough to help the 12-member deficit Super Committee reach agreement on anything. Late on Monday, co-chairs Jeb Hensarling and Patty Murray put the panel to bed in an official statement.

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Super Committee

CHART: The More Congress 'Fails' The More The Deficit Goes Down

Brian Beutler | November 21, 2011, 12:11PM

shutterstock/ gary718

The Super Committee is poised to fail after markets close on Monday -- which is to say the 12 members weren't able to agree on a package of new revenues and lower spending to reduce the deficit by at least $1.2 trillion over 10 years. That was their charge, and insofar as they didn't do what they set out to do, they "failed."

But if Republicans and Democrats keep failing to agree on this stuff for the next year and change, the result will be an extraordinary decrease in federal deficits -- many multiples of what the Super Committee was tasked with finding.

We've been over this before, but the point is actually stronger now than it was earlier this year, because of the outcome of the debt limit fight. Between the looming expiration of the Bush tax cuts and other temporary tax provisions ($4.8 trillion), a large, scheduled drop in Medicare physician reimbursement rates ($300 billion), the soon-to-be triggered penalties for Super Committee failure ($1.2 trillion), and the resulting savings on servicing the national debt ($900 billion), deficits are set to drop by over $7 trillion automatically, unless Congress affirmatively stops it. That's on top of the $1 trillion-plus dollars Congress banked in the debt ceiling fight.

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Super Committee

AFL Warns Super Committee Dems: Not One Vote For GOP Plans

Brian Beutler | November 18, 2011, 9:20AM

'Super Committee' members Sen. Patt Murray (D-WA) and Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), September 7, 2011.

So far Democrats and Republicans on the Super Committee have acted as voting blocs. And smart money is on the idea that any plan that can pass the committee will get substantial buy-in from both parties.

But for progressive groups there's a Doomsday Scenario where one deal-hungry Democrat defies his colleagues and votes with the entire GOP to pass a plan. The AFL-CIO is petitioning Dems to prevent that from happening.

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Super Committee

Super Committee Republicans Work The Refs

Brian Beutler | November 17, 2011, 5:10PM

If you're looking for evidence that Republicans aren't worried about actual federal deficits, look no further than their about-face on how to count the Super Committee's budget savings.

The details are technical, but crucial, so bear with me.

At the very end of the debt limit fight, Republicans crowed that the Super Committee's inherent design would make it difficult for the panel's Democrats to insist on tax increases. Because of how the Congressional Budget Office typically scores legislation, they argued, any attempt to raise marginal tax rates from their current Bush-era levels would actually score as a big tax cut and thus a budget buster -- a fact that would make it difficult for the Committee to hit its $1.2 trillion target.

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Bush Tax Cuts

Pelosi To Hensarling On Medicare: You've Got To Be Kidding Me!

Brian Beutler | November 17, 2011, 12:44PM

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi

With just six days left until the Super Committee deadline, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) acknowledged Thursday that the panel is unlikely to agree on the sort of broad deficit-cutting bargain she and other Democratic leaders have pushed for. And she made a strong case that the GOP's allergy to taxes is the reason her expectations have diminished.

Specifically, she responded to Republican Super Committee co-chair Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) who on Wednesday said Democrats would have to agree to dramatic steps -- such as partially privatizing Medicare -- before Republicans would agree to substantial new tax revenues.

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Super Committee

Can't Go Small Either! Republicans Rejected Private Dem Super Committee Offer

Brian Beutler | November 16, 2011, 8:04PM

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA)

To hear Super Committee Democrats and Republicans talk about it, the parties really hit a wall early last week after each rejected the other's wildly different offer to cut about $2 trillion from deficits over 10 year.

But discussions continued until late into the week, when they stumbled again over much smaller goals, according to a Democratic aide.

The details, first reported by the Associated Press, underscore just how difficult it will be for the panel to reach an agreement by Monday, which GOP co-chair Jeb Hensarling cited Wednesday as the drop-dead date for the 12 members to act.

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Super Committee

CHART OF THE DAY: The Regressive Tax Plan Super Committee Dems Shot Down

Brian Beutler | November 10, 2011, 12:40PM

A new Democratic memo rips apart a GOP Super Committee proposal -- offered by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) -- that would have reduced, and made permanent, Bush-era tax rates. Many of the key details of the plan remain undisclosed, even to Democrats, but they've included a table laying out all of the lower rates the GOP has proposed, and deduced from what's known that the changes would significantly reduce the progressiveness of the tax code.

Here's how. The GOP claims the plan would raise $300 billion in revenue, and also make the newer, lower Bush tax rates permanent. To accomplish this, simple arithmetic implies he'd have to raise a ton of tax revenue elsewhere. But since he objects to raising taxes on capital income, that would require him to slash deeply into credits and preferences that benefit lower and middle income taxpayers.

Democrats drew a comparison to a similar plan -- one with smaller tax cuts that has been scored by the Joint Committee on Taxation, and concluded:

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Super Committee

Report: Super Committee GOPers Agree To Violate Norquist Pledge...With A Catch

Brian Beutler | November 7, 2011, 4:12PM

Grover Norquist

Super Committee Republicans are floating a trial balloon that would produce new tax revenue, in apparent contravention of Grover Norquist's taxpayer protection pledge, according to Wall Street Journal editorialist Stephen Moore.

But as Moore explains that the offer has a catch:

One positive development on taxes taking shape is a deal that could include limiting tax deductions, perhaps by capping write-offs on charities, state and local taxes, and mortgage interest payments as a percentage of each tax filer's gross income. That idea was introduced on these pages by Harvard economist Martin Feldstein.

In exchange, Democrats would agree to make the Bush income-tax cuts permanent. This would mean preventing top rates from going to 42% from 35% today, and keeping the capital gains and dividend tax rate at 15%, as opposed to plans to raise them to 23.8% or higher after 2013.

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Rick Perry

CHART OF THE DAY: Rick Perry Proposes A Tax Plan Aimed At The One Percent

Brian Beutler | November 1, 2011, 11:49AM

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R)

Recall that Rick Perry's so-called "flat tax" plan isn't flat at all, but rather an alternative tax system that would constitute a massive tax cut for the rich. For people above a certain income, his plan would be worth opting into, and for the rest of earners, it would make sense to stay in the current tax system.

The Tax Policy Center has posted data neatly illustrating this bug (or feature, depending on your point of view). Here it is in handy graph form.

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Jobs

Senate Dems Face Major Challenge On Key Part Of Obama Jobs Bill

Brian Beutler | November 1, 2011, 5:55AM

Senate Democrats will continue to force Republicans to filibuster popular pieces of President Obama's jobs bill in the days weeks ahead -- to bolster their narrative that Republicans would rather see the economy fail than help Obama, or raise taxes by even a fraction of a percent on millionaires and billionaires.

But sometime between now and the end of the year, Dems will either have to interrupt their strategy or risk watching as two key provisions that helped bolster the economy this year lapse, and threaten what's already expected to be modest economic growth in 2012.

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