The republican plan wasn't conciliatory, it was supposed to be a plan that appeals to the media. Boehner said that we should achieve the same revenue increases and discretionary spending cuts laid out in Simpson Bowles. 3 problems with that:
1) We've already done the discretionary spending cuts in Simpson-Bowles. You'd need to identify new spending cuts if you want to cut spending again. And since non-defense discretionary spending has fallen to 50 year lows that pretty much means... cutting defense, i.e. the thing republicans insist we don't cut.
2) Simpson Bowles was a democratic concession to try and get republicans talking when the GOP had just won an election. The GOP just lost an election... and now they expect the democrats to want to make the same concession?
3) Boehner doesn't lay out any actually areas where he would cut spending or raise revenues in anywhere remotely approaching the numbers he wants. On taxes for instance he wants to raise hundreds of millions in taxes but it cant come from the middle class, cant come from a rate hike and cant cut into popular deductions like the charitable giving deduction. Well that doesn't leave remotely close the level of revenues needed. Simpson-Bowles called for increasing capital gains taxes and Pigot taxes and the like, stuff where the numbers checked out.
The media is hopelessly clueless about 1 and 3. The media has caught onto 2 a little bit. But this is pretty much what to expect when you have people who know nothing about the federal budget reporting on budget negotiations. For government nerds this is the equivalent of when the media has a spike of interest in something sciencey related to NASA or the Higgs-Boson and reporters start saying all sorts of ignorant stuff about the subject. The republican proposal is supposed to appeal to the kind of incompetent reporter who writes those articles.
Obama for his part has basically just offered the same budget he was proposing before the election. He isn't offering the republicans anything until they actually bring something to the table as well. He has also suggested a budget that is broadly speaking, good. The cuts come from things like granting Medicare the authority to negotiate for prescription drug prices. That is something that we should want anyway. He also calls for spending increases (not as big as the cuts) in other areas, like infrastructure spending. So the economic impact of the cuts should be blunted; even though total spending will decrease, it will go where it will get more bang for the buck.
So at this point neither side has really offered anything at all publicly. But I don't think that's necessarily bad. Real negotiations tend to keep talks quiet until the end. People start letting loose the details of the talks when they think negotiations will fail and they want to start spinning it.
My guess is that we will probably see something closer to Obama's proposal then Boehners. You can't pile concessions to the democrats onto Boehners budget because he doesn't have a budget. And the democrats are digging in their heels over savaging the Obama budget all that badly. So my guess is that either the clock running out forces Boehner to accept something like the Obama budget with face saving concessions to republicans that don't do much or the talks break down and we're all dead within two years from a collapse into anarchy followed by nuclear war. Either way, Boehner has his work cut out for him keeping his leadership position.
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Topic: American Election Megathread - It's Over (Read 771111 times)