First, look at this snippet from Boehner's press conference today:
"Feeding the growth of government through higher tax rates won't help us solve the problem."
Now, Cantor's statement of today:
I hope President Obama responds to this election by making an effort to work with Republicans. There is no mandate for raising tax rates on the American people. There is a mandate for avoiding the fiscal cliff and finding real solutions so we can make life work for people again.
"Higher tax rates won't create jobs and they won't solve our spending crisis. Massive defense cuts won't make us safer and won't support our troops. Ingnoring the problems of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid won't help people get better health care or prepare for a secure retirement. The fiscal cliff is looming, and we must provide real solutions, or face dire consequences.
Emphasis added.
Coincidence? Maybe. Slip of the tongues? I doubt it. These guys work off the same talking points sheet.
They didn't say 'higher tax burden' or 'making some people pay more in taxes'. No, they very specifically talked about higher tax rates. Why is this distinction important?
Because you can raise a lot of tax revenue without touching the rates. Just do what that guy who was running on the Republican ticket..... what's his name? I just can't quite remember it...... the one with the car elevators.... oh, never mind..... anyway, he started talking about capping itemized deductions, first using $17,000 as his number, then got as high as $50,000. If the number was high enough to not hit the middle class, this kind of revenue-enhancer could raise the same $80 billion that President Obama's idea of putting the top tax rates back up to Clinton era levels.
And you wouldn't touch the critical 'tax rates' that the Republicans are defending like it's their 'Alamo'.
The best part of that is you're using a Republican (Romney) idea against them!
And if you can get past that logjam, the rest of the fiscal cliff could actually be pretty simple.......
The ATM fix - just do the same thing that's been done since the '70s. Nothing to it but change the effective dates on the existing legislation. NOBODY wants the ATM to lower the boom.
The Medicare Doc fix.... same thing. They've been pushing that out a year every year since about 1998, what's another year?
(Fix both of these permanently later.)
Sequestration? That's not difficult either.....
On either side (defense, non-defense) the savings are about $500 billion over 10 years. They wrote it for $50 billion per year, but how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time, so just make it gradually increase:
2013 $10 billion
2014 20
2015 30
2016 40
2017 50
2018 60
2019 70
2020 80
2021 90
2022 100
Do that and you're actually saving $550 billion over 10 years, but doing it very gradually, so the pain isn't felt. Seriously, are we to think the Pentagon couldn't trim $10 billion over a year? (Personally, I'd like to see them take the whole $50 billion - our country wouldn't be any less safe, but I don't want to see the haircut on non-defense spending).
There, the fiscal cliff solved in 10 minutes. No muss, no fuss, no bother.
I know, I'm dreaming.... mainly because the posturing and hostage-taking on the Republican side has NOTHING to do with the good of the country and EVERYTHING to do with power-grabbing.
And that's true of EVERYTHING the Republicans do.
Cheers.