Baracks latest offer, 1.5 trillion dollars in savings over 10 years. First, BHO has no control after four years so ho can he use 10 years of possible savings as a measuring stick. Second, we are spending 1.5 trillion more than we are taking in right now, so it would be like reducing you credit card spending by 10% when you are still a million in the hole.
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
As the Right was so fond of telling us in 2010..."Elections have consequences" You LOST.
'Surprise': GOP Outraged -- by Offer They Received Weeks Ago
WASHINGTON -- Republicans in Congress reacted angrily to an Obama administration proposal delivered Thursday by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner that offered to avert the fiscal cliff by raising $1.6 trillion in new taxes, in exchange for some $400 billion in cuts to entitlement programs to be negotiated next year.
But the proposal wasn't new. The offer that has Republicans furious was presented to them earlier this month by President Barack Obama at the White House, according to a well-placed Democratic source, and confirmed by two GOP sources involved in the talks.
What surprised Republicans wasn't the newest offer, but who delivered it. The original offer, delivered by Obama, simply wasn't taken seriously. Republicans assumed that Obama's initial offer floated to congressional leaders would go like many others he's made in the past, and quickly soften amid staff talks. That seemed to be happening, which left them taken by surprise by Geithner. Acknowledging that Thursday's offer was essentially the same as the one presented by the president, a GOP aide said that White House "staff has been back-channeling flexibility up until now. This was the first time their staff echoed his fantasyland numbers." A second senior GOP aide called Thursday's offer "a more detailed version" of Obama's. "The day after the White House meeting, we gave them our framework. It took them 10 days for them to give us theirs and it didn't reflect any of the conversations we have had since then," he said.
Having Geithner make the offer accomplishes several things. It blocks Republicans from claiming that Democrats have not put an offer on the table -- because they've now been publicly complaining about the offer on the table. And it pushes the process closer to the fiscal cliff, ramping up pressure on Republicans.
Geithner's offer would delay the sequester -- automatic spending cuts to the Pentagon and social programs -- for a year, and effectively eliminates the congressional requirement to lift the debt ceiling in perpetuity. The offer included an extension of unemployment insurance, the payroll tax and even money to help homeowners modify mortgages and invest in infrastructure.
The president made the same two-step offer to Republicans, said the sources in both parties involved in the talks. Republicans contend they've made a sufficient counter-offer that is essentially being ignored. Democrats say that Republicans refuse to get specific on entitlements. The president "asked them to give us what they want as a down payment on entitlements. They still haven't given us a proposal. All they have done is said, extend all rates," said a congressional Democratic source.
So, it's not that it's a "surprise"... It's not that there is NOT a "proposal on the table"... Apparently the problem is that they didn't take it seriously before--but they do now; and they're still thinking they're going to get everything they campaigned on...AND THEY LOST... And if it "goes off the cliff", they're screwed either way...
To the victor go the spoils.
