Harry Reid flanked by Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin.
Sen. Chuck Schumer's
speech at the National Press Club on Tuesday has been ruffling a great many bipartisan deficit peacock feathers. Schumer's speech, heavy on deficit reduction and once again floating entitlement cuts, was intended to keep the focus on letting the Bush tax cuts for high earners expire, something the latest bipartisan gang
has been negotiating away under the Bowles-Simpson guise of tax "reform" that would keep rates for the rich low while doing away with other loopholes and credits.
In a speech to the National Press Club, Mr. Schumer branded the idea of a tax code overhaul that could simultaneously lower the top rates, bring in more revenue and protect middle-class taxpayers from increases as “little more than happy talk.”
Instead, he said that the top two income tax rates should be frozen around 36 percent and 39.6 percent, which are levels from the Clinton era, and that any additional revenue generated by closing loopholes and curtailing or eliminating tax deductions and credits should be devoted to deficit reduction. [...]
Republicans reacted harshly to Mr. Schumer’s position, which they said could ensure that the nation careers off the fiscal cliff in January, when all of the Bush-era tax cuts expire and $1 trillion in automatic across-the-board cuts to military and domestic programs over the next 10 years begin to go into force. [...]
“Schumer’s speech puts him squarely in the get-a-deal camp, and he willingly put entitlements on the table,” said Jim Kessler, senior vice president for policy at Third Way, a centrist Democratic group. “That’s a big move.”
When the Third Way is happy at the prospect of entitlement cuts, look out. The so-called
Gang of Eight are mostly backbenchers who revere Bowles-Simpson. One of them, Mark Warner, is pushing hard for a new campaign called Fix the Debt, spearheaded by Simpson and Bowles and aimed at big business, trying to get them to pile onto the idea of reforming the tax code in exchange for making structural changes to Social Security and Medicare. They've raised $32 million, with which they apparently hope to buy a place at the negotiating table for Warner.
Complicating the issue for Harry Reid, the guy who will end up having to lead the Democratic caucus in negotiating out of the fiscal cliff morasse, is that another of his leadership team, Dick Durbin, is in the camp negotiating for Bowles-Simpson. Durbin was on the commission, and was a vote for the proposal which ultimately failed.
Schumer's pushback against Bowles-Simpson and for letting the tax cuts on the wealthy expire is critical at this juncture to shore up Democratic opposition to what the Gang is trying to pull off. It's unfortunately also coming at a bad political juncture. Putting Social Security and Medicare cuts on the negotiating table one month before the election is very, very dangerous for Democrats. Republicans have shown time and again that they'll happily bludgeon Democrats with Social Security and Medicare if they get the opportunity.
Now would be a very good time for a very strong statement from President Obama, echoing Vice President Biden's guarantee on Social Security.