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Will ‘fiscal cliff’ crisis be averted before year’s end?
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Facing a looming deadline to avoid the fiscal cliff, President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner met Thursday for their first face-to-face talk in four days.
Boehner arrived for the previously unscheduled meeting just after 5 p.m. ET, a few hours after claiming Obama had failed to offer a serious compromise to prevent the fiscal cliff’s automatic tax hikes and spending cuts set to take effect in less than three weeks. He spent about 50 minutes in the White House before returning to his office.
A White House official and Boehner’s spokesman then issued near identical statements, calling the Oval Office meeting “frank” and saying the “lines of communication remain open.”
The meeting didn’t spur Boehner to change his plans to return to Ohio on Friday, one of the speaker’s aides said. The House is scheduled to end its current session that day, but Majority Leader Eric Cantor has told lawmakers they could be working longer than that with the fiscal cliff still in limbo.
The inability to reach a deal, thus far, reflects Democrats and Republicans’ underlying divisions about the size of government and how much the wealthiest Americans should pay in taxes.
Do you think Congress will come to agreement on the fiscal cliff issue before year’s end?
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The “man in the middle” is John Boehner. There is no deal that would be acceptable to the Democrats and the extremists in the Republican party. In the house, Boehner will eventually get an acceptable bill passed with Democrats and moderate Republicans supporting it. He will not do that until after he has been reelected as speaker on January 2nd.
If Boehner were to cut a deal now, he would jeopardize his speakership. Hence, no deal until after the first of the year.
I think that’s a reasonable scenario. It ignores the uncertainty that will exist in the meantime — but that doesn’t seem to concern the conservatives. Add to that the uncertainty of raising the debt limit ceiling (again opposed by the Tea-bagger faction) which will hit late December threatening US default.
Note that after the first of the year there will be 8 more Democrats in the house and 8 fewer Republicans. They will only need 18 Republicans that put the good of the nation ahead of other considerations.
Wish there were any Democrats who put the interests of the American people ahead of their avarice for spending tax-payer dollars.
“There is no deal that would be acceptable to the Democrats and the extremists in the Republican party. In the house”.
Obama, Reid and Pelosi are the extremists for insisting we continue their their addiction to deficit spending.
We went over that cliff when we borrowed excessive money from China, printed a ton more money, and all the phoney stimulous programs were put in place!
Or did you mean that we went over that cliff when we engaged in an unfunded war in Iraq and added an unfunded prescription drug program to Medicare? Rich makes some good points. But it is hard for me to believe that there won’t be,at the very least, an agreed outline for a deal immediately after the first of the year. .
The conditions for the fiscal cliff were created when Bush put in a temporary tax cut. That had never been done before and it was, fundamentally, a very bad idea.
Whether we got here by steam locomotive or diesel, and regardless of who were the engineers, we’re nearing the end of the line or at least the end of the maintained track. Blaming engineers won’t change anything. As far as a deal, before or after the end of the year, will it be a real deal that significantly advances us toward fixing the Nation’s fiscal problems or just a facade covering patches, baling wire, and duct tape, the reality being the can is just kicked on down the road ?
Actually, Mr Smith, it matters a great deal how we got into this mess. Because we can’t get out of it if we don’t know how we got into it in the first place. Or why.
We’ve been sinking into this hole for at least the last three decades and this sink was precipitated by a bumper sticker slogan.
Remember “government isn’t the solution; government is the problem”?
Fiscal conservatives have absolutely no intention of balancing any budget, eliminating any deficit, or paying off any debt. If they were serious we would have seen some progress on that front but we haven’t. They’ve deliberately pursued policies that have increased deficits and increased the nation’s debt.
The problem is simple. It’s not even math. It’s arithmetic.
It is impossible to balance the budget by decreasing revenues while at the same time pursuing an aggressively militaristic foreign policy. Can’t be done.
So what are fiscal conservatives really up to? Answer. Small government. Fiscal conservatives have been trying to dismantle the New Deal and all subsequent related government programs for the last eighty years. Problem is people like all those programs. Politically difficult but not impossible.
The strategy is called “Starve the Beast”. If our governments have no money and we are up to our eyeballs in debt then we have no choice but to dump all those safety net programs—and a whole bunch of other things, like the Food and Drug Administration and workplace safety and Social Security and public education—has go to go.
The mantra is “we have no money”
Except we do have money and we all know it.
Our nation’s fiscal problems are easily explained. Ninety-nine per cent of this crisis is the result of a concentration of wealth at the top facilitated by a gang of crazies so intent on shrinking government down to nothing that they are perfectly willing to destroy this country in the process.
The only thing I take issue with is your “. . . it matters a great deal . . . ” statement. I didn’t say it didn’t matter how we got into this mess but rather that blaming wouldn’t change anything (get us out of it). Indeed it does matter how got into it so if ( note I said “if” ) we get out of if we don’t repeat the same mistakes. ( “Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” )
Sorry but your post was not clear (“Whether we got here by steam locomotive or diesel, and regardless of who”)
Then we agree that it is essential not to fall into the easy journalistic trap of “fair and balanced” (if one side is irresponsible then the other side must be irresponsible as well)but must make an honest effort to figure out what happened. With regard to that Todd Gitlin’s “The Whole World is Watching” is a fast, easy, and eye opening read.
At this point the issue just happens to split in two.
It’s either excessive tax cuts or excessive spending.
Republicans won’t give on raising taxes; Democrats won’t give on cutting spending, specifically entitlements such as Social Security
That’s a discussion
Republicans have compromised on increasing revenue. Democrats have not placed any spending cuts on the table. Obama is power drunk and only focused on raising taxes on every person and small business earning over $250,000. Those revenues affect the budget in what is less than a rounding error, but Obama is only driven by desire to lay this economic mess on someone, anyone, other that his own failed pollicies. It been 4 years, and rather than change strategies Obama is doubling down on failure. The only thing he has been successful at is fooling the low information voters
http://thegazette.com/daily-conversations/will-fiscal-cliff-crisis-be-averted-before-years-end/?comments=show
Again. What has Obama compromised on? Answer, nothing.
Republicans need to walk away and let the dems deal with the reality of their policies. Rembember. Those that work for a living will always survive. Those that choose to enslave themselves to the govt should live by their votes.
President Obama seeks to take the Nation over the fiscal cliff. He believes he can destroy the GOP, raise taxes and continue his drunken spending binge. Maybe that’s what is needed to shock people into reality. If he does it the GOP should shut down the debt ceiling and take the piggy bank away. The it would be time for impeachment talks to begin. We don’t needt a leader who can’t lead and is a failure at economic and fiscal policy. Let’s not wait for Greece.
Seems we have the usual suspects posting the usual disinformation using the exact same rhetoric they’ve been using ever since Obama was first elected four years ago. So I guess we need to revisit Rex Nutting’s article. So here goes.
Market Watch Wall Street Journal 5/22/2012
“Obama Spending Binge Never happened”, Rex Nutting
“Almost everyone believes that Obama has presided over a massive increase in federal spending, an “inferno” of spending that threatens our jobs, our businesses and our children’s future. Even Democrats seem to think it’s true.
But it didn’t happen. Although there was a big stimulus bill under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s.
Even hapless Herbert Hoover managed to increase spending more than Obama has”
The budget numbers Nutting uses are Wiki stuff readily available to anyone willing to take five seconds to google the information.
Also, the latest poll numbers:
“Fiscal Cliff Delays Holiday Homecoming for Congress”
Tom Cohan CNN 12/14/2012
“Nearly half of Americans — 49% — approve the president’s handling of the talks, compared with 25% who say Boehner is doing a good job, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll released Wednesday.
Meanwhile, a Bloomberg National Poll found nearly two-thirds of respondents, including nearly 50% of Republicans, believe Obama’s re-election gave him a mandate to seek higher taxes on the wealthy.”
Talk of drunken spending binge, accusations of treason, and demands for impeachment are neither helpful nor reality based. This kind of talk does nothing except shut down the conversation we should be having
Are the “usual suspects” members of the Department of Misinformation or the Department of Willful Ignorance ?
Here’s an interesting graph of US gross national debt:
http://zfacts.com/p/318.html
Hard to tell given that Department of Misinformation and Department of Willful Ignorance exist in a symbiotic relationship of such hyper co-dependency that they likely don’t know themselves.