Here’s the new “deal” the teatards are pushing:
Turning right with a vengeance, Republicans will bring to the House floor Tuesday a newly revised debt-ceiling bill that is remarkable for its total absence of compromise at this late date, two weeks before the threat of default.
The action comes as President Barack Obama and the GOP leadership continue to pursue some middle ground and two persons familiar with the talks confirmed that Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor had an unannounced meeting with the president Sunday at the White House as part of these discussions.
Final revisions made Friday submerge conservative demands to reduce all federal spending to 18 percent of gross domestic product — a target that threatened to split the GOP by requiring far deeper cuts than even the party’s April budget. But Republican congressional leaders still want a 10-year, $1.8 trillion cut from nondefense appropriations and have added a balanced-budget constitutional amendment that so restricts future tax legislation that even President Ronald Reagan might have opposed it in the 1980s.
About now is when someone like Doug Mataconis will just throw up their hands and shout both sides do it or the system is dysfunctional rather than point the finger at the problem- the Republicans. Here are some more details:
Statutory caps would drive spending down to 19.9 percent of gross domestic product by 2021 — a $1 trillion difference with Obama in that year alone. At the same time, Pentagon appropriations are assumed to grow even as Supplemental Security Income payments for the elderly and the disabled would be exposed to future sequesters to enforce the caps.
I’m surprised they didn’t throw in ending the estate tax.