Cuts now, taxes later

Cuts now, taxes later

by digby

So Jon Kyl is publicly spinning about the debt ceiling talks and claiming they’ve already found 150 billion to cut and are all in agreement that they will have to find “a lot more.” He says everything is being discussed, including “entitlements” and defense although they haven’t yet gotten to the health care portion of their program.

Whatever. His job is to pretend like they are getting what they want, so who knows what’s true and what isn’t?

But this sounds like a new construction of their usual “no new taxes” pledge, which I think is kind of interesting:

Echoing other Republicans, Kyl said tax measures will not be part of the debt deal because it would “be too complicated to deal with that at the same time that we’re dealing with the debt ceiling.”

Oh boy. I really hope this isn’t the way they’re going to go with this. Cuts in exchange for “future tax reform” means that there will be no tax increases. I have absolutely no faith at all that they will do anything like that — even the “tax expenditure” gambit — close to the election. And unless Obama wins with a gigantic majority and a filibuster proof senate in 2012, I’m fairly skeptical that they will be able to do it then — and that includes the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, which the two parties will use as major campaign themes.

We know that if the Republicans take control the Democrats will scramble to see who can sign on to the Republican “mandate” first. But the opposite will not happen. If the Democrats win, it’s hardly likely that the Republicans will sign on to the expiration of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. Why would the dynamic be any different then than it was before? After all, Obama ran on that issue in 2008, he had 58 Senators allegedly backing him at the time and they held him hostage. They don’t need to have control of either house to obstruct it. They will — and the Democrats, including the president, will probably “let” them.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed that this kabuki debt ceiling fight results in something as totally meaningless as the “negotiation” already is. And let’s further hope that the looming budget fight scares the Republicans about “entitlements” as much as taxes scare the Democrats and they end up doing nothing substantive at all. At the moment gridlock is our friend.

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