The would-be Super Congress: Reps. Upton, Bacerra, Hensarling and
Sens. Murray, Kyl, Baucus, Portman and Kerry
(Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
As the clock winds down on the not-so-super Super Congress, details emerge over what happened in the last week in negotiating. As it turns out, early this week Democrats were willing to go with the
top-line figures offered in the proposal from Sen. Pat Toomey—"$400 billion from revenue; $876 billion, including $225 billion from Medicare and $25 billion from Medicaid, in spending cuts"—but refused to accept some of the GOP's provisions, including adopting the chained CPI for Social Security, raising the eligibility age for Medicare or making the Bush tax cuts permanent. Republican refusal to consider this concession from the Democrats was when talks basically ended.
Let's just review what regressive tax policies could have been left on the table:
Average change in tax, relative to current policy (click here for full-size image):
Average change in after-tax-income, relative to current policy (click here for full-size image):
Those charts are worth keeping in mind when you read
something like this from Ezra Klein.
But the reality is that, on taxes, what Republicans and Democrats agree about is much more important than what they disagree about. Both parties are proposing to make the Bush tax cuts permanent. Compared to that $3.7 trillion hit to the budget, the tax increases they're putting on the table are small beer. Put the policies together and, on net, the two parties are saying we should cut taxes by somewhere between $3.4 trillion and $2.7 trillion over the next 10 years.
If the TPM story above is true, then no, Democrats are not looking to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, at least not for the very wealthy. But look at that top chart again. That's not a tax cut for people making up to $200,000 in the Republican plan. And it's a major hit for the middle-class in after-tax income. While there's plenty of blame (or credit, as the case may be) for the likely failure of the Super Congress, those three red bars jutting out into the land of lower taxes and higher income for the very wealthy are what Republicans refuse to give up. Just to set the record straight.