Fiscal cliff notes 12/6
by digby
Golly, I sure hope Lawrence O’Donnell is as full of “malarkey” as he sounds because if he isn’t, we’re in trouble:
When asked what the GOP should get in return for what everyone agrees is an impending cave on the high end tax cuts, O’Donnell explained:
The president offers it every time he lays this out and I think that most of the world doesn’t hear he second part of what what he says. He always says, “I have to have the top rates go up” — and it’s worth noting that he doesn’t specifically say I have to have 36 or 39%, he doesn’t offer a specific number. But he always says, “but we’re willing to do that by significant spending cuts in entitlements.” He says that. He brings it up. He doesn’t say the word Medicare, but that s what he’s talking about. You have Paul Ryan and Boehner saying, we can’t do anything without cuts in Medicare, they specify, they’re happy to say what they want to cut in entitlements. [no they’re not — ed.]
So it’s there. They’re both saying they want to do that. It’s absolutely true that there are some Democrats who will say “absolutely not, I won’t touch medicare in any way in relation to that” but remember, in this kind of package, when it’s bipartisan, you don’t need every Democratic vote just as you don’t need every Republican vote.
At that point Krystal Ball explained that the Democrats are drawing the line at benefit cuts, and O’Donnell helpfully explained that was all bullshit and that there wasn’t any more squeezing to be done out of providers and doctors. Now, O’Donnell is hardly an oracle and much of what he says there is just wrong. I’ve been as harshly critical of the president in this matter as anyone and have followed this story very closely for months and it’s just not correct that the president has openly offered cuts to entitlements every time he demands the tax hike. The reason people haven’t heard it because he hasn’t said it. He has said that he won’t allow the rich to have tax cuts while deficit reduction rests on the backs of the middle class and he’s said that he wants “balanced approach” and that he’s willing to agree to a deal that will make people in his own party mad, but he’s never been that explicit in public. The only reason we know that Medicare and other “entitlements” are likely on the table is because we know that he offered them in the previous debt ceiling negotiations. If he’d ever said this aloud, I think you would have a much different negotiation today.
As I said, O’Donnell isn’t much of an oracle and normally I wouldn’t pay any attention to him, but as you can see from my previous post, he isn’t the only one who’s thinking along these lines. Now that the Republicans are talking tax hikes, the rest of the equation is coming into focus — as a fait accompli.
In other news, the White House took one of the major tools to avoid the debt ceiling standoff off the table today:
White House spokesman Jay Carney put an end to intense speculation Thursday about whether President Obama would do an end run around Congress with one simple line: “This administration does not believe the 14th Amendment gives the president the power to ignore the debt ceiling — period.”
I’m going to guess that means it’s part of these lame duck negotiations which isn’t good news for the home team.
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