The CBO has scored the so-called "so-called fiscal cliff" deal hammered out last night and passed in the Senate and has concluded it will add $4 Trillion to the deficit over the next decade.
The extension of lower tax rates for a bulk of the nation's taxpayers and the addition of a permanent patch to the alternative minimum tax would add roughly $3.6 trillion to the deficit over the next decade, the CBO said. Other individual, business, and energy tax extenders would add another $76 billion. The extension of unemployment benefits would cost roughly $30 billion, and the so-called "doc fix" would tally another $25 billion through fiscal 2022.
The CBO says the budget agreement will lead to an overall increase in spending of about $330 billion over 10 years.
Even though a majority of Americans thought the danger of jumping over the cliff was that the deficit would go UP (yes really), averting the cliff will increase the deficit.
Going over the so-called "so called fiscal cliff" would have reduced the deficit, by raising taxes and cutting spending, so if Republicans' aim was to lower the deficit they could have jumped. Of course we know that they don't care about lowering the deficit but rather cutting entitlements and cutting taxes for the rich. Any pretense about them caring about the deficit should be put to rest with this vote.
The vote has passed the House, and Republicans now will be able to say they 'gave' at the office on taxes. Now that they have made this 'concession' (according to them) their real work begins: trashing the safety net.
After an initial uproar over the Senate bill's content -- namely, the lack of spending cuts within -- House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) presented his caucus with two options. The first was to amend the bill with approximately $328 billion in spending cuts. If a majority commit to passing it, he'd bring it to the floor. The second was to hold a vote on the Senate-passed legislation with no amendments.
Republicans seemed to be looking forward to future chances to extract cuts.
"We still have more opportunities. We've got the debt ceiling coming, sequestration," Fleming said. "So we're going to get taxes off the table. The president can't say, 'We've go to raise taxes first before we get to spending cuts.' We will have already done that.Now the topic will be spending cuts, from this point out."
Now that Democrats have given away their only leverage, tax cuts, Republicans are now ready to get to work.