Yes, you read that right. This is a deficit commission. A commission organized specifically around cutting the deficit. Maybe they don't get that they're supposed to be working to lower the deficit. TPM's Brian Beutler reports:
At a tax reform working group meeting last week, Republicans argued against every possible tax increase. According to one source familiar with the deliberations, Republicans were even opposed to eliminating loopholes, exemptions, credits and other so-called "tax expenditures" unless the associated revenue increase could be used to lower capital gains and corporate income rates.
"Republicans have not even said that we should get any revenue from taxes," the source said. "Even tax expenditures. They appear to want to use the savings on tax expenditures to cut corporate taxes. So shared sacrifices -- except for large corporations who make out even better."
That could dramatically hamstring the commission. Thus far, the working group meetings have focused on discretionary and mandatory spending -- and reports suggest two things very clearly: Republicans and some Democrats on the committee are willing to recommend benefit cuts to popular programs, including Social Security, and, possibly, Medicare. But as onerous as those options are to progressive critics of the commission, they've always been premised on the understanding that they only get the green light if paired with commensurate tax reform, making the tax code more progressive and broader-based.
This gets back to that whole "good faith" element of the commission that has been severely lacking from the git-go. Heavily right-tilted from the beginning, with the majority of public discussion emanating from it being centered around cuts--cuts to Social Security, Medicare, even benefits to soldiers and veterans.
In the long run, this push by Republicans could be good news. Democrats on the commission have been operating from an understanding that agreement on their part on spending cuts would be met halfway from Republicans who would agree to tax increases on the revenue side. Eventually, Dems are going to learn that there is no compromise with Republicans, and hopefully now is when this lesson sinks in and they won't allow themselves to get rolled. Beyond reneging on this deal, Beutler reports that the intransigence of Rep. David Camp and his staff, who is co-chair of the tax reform group in the commission, has been bad so bad that it "won them a rebuke from a frustrated [Sen. Kent] Conrad," the other chair of the working group.
But now two questions hang over the commission: Will the elected Republicans on the panel stand firm against any tax cuts [sic, Beutler surely means increases]? And if so, will Democrats then reject an unbalanced proposal based only on spending and benefit cuts? Or will the commission simply yield nothing.
An impasse at this point could be the best that we could hope for.