Quote:

---

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told President Barack Obama that House Democrats remain firmly committed to allowing Bush-era tax cuts expire for earners making more than $250,000 — a move that could complicate the administration’s efforts to reach a compromise with Republicans.

After joining Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and other Democratic congressional leaders at the White House this morning, Pelosi told a closed-door meeting of House Democrats that she informed Obama “our caucus feels strongly about the $250,000 tax cut threshhold…and the president is very much aware of the Democratic caucus’s position,” according to a person who attended the caucus meeting.

Pelosi’s comments come as House Majority Steny Hoyer told colleagues he would push for a vote on only extending the middle class tax cuts, according to an unnamed legislative aide quoted by the Washington Post’s Plum Line blog.

During the hour-long session in the White House, Reid and Pelosi, whose position as Democratic leader was reaffirmed in a vote by House Democrats Wednesday, both pressed Obama, as they did on a conference call Monday, to adopt a tough bargaining stance with the GOP and avoid the muddled messaging that has characterized some administration pronouncements.

---

Quote:

---

--Permanent tax cuts for the rich would reduce federal revenues by almost $1.8 trillion over 10 years. By 2014, the annual revenue loss would amount to $400 billion, or 2 percent of gross domestic product — almost the size of this year's federal budget deficit.

--Paying for the tax cuts would require monumental reductions in spending or increases in other taxes. To offset the revenue losses in 2014 would require, for example, a 48 percent reduction in Social Security benefits, a 57 percent cut in Medicare benefits, or a 117 percent increase in corporate taxes.

--Over the long run, making the tax cuts permanent would cost as much as repairing the shortfalls in the Social Security and Medicare Hospital Insurance trust funds. Thus, to the extent that Social Security and Medicare are considered major long-term fiscal problems, making the tax cuts permanent should be seen as creating a fiscal problem of equivalent magnitude.

---

Quote:

---

House Republicans opposed the legislation because the $12.5 billion cost of the extension would have been added to the deficit.

Republicans said they would have liked the chance to find ways to offset the cost of the bill elsewhere in the budget.

Lawmakers will be off next week on Thanksgiving recess, returning to Washington on Nov. 29. The House plans to take up the legislation when it returns, but that leaves little time to pass a bill.

The Senate has yet to set a vote on extending federal unemployment benefits, which expire at the end of the month. It's increasingly likely that the benefits will lapse, which will result in some 600,000 people losing their unemployment benefits in a matter of days.

Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.) told Bloomberg, "I don’t see how we can go home for Thanksgiving when as a result of a failure of benefits, hundreds of thousands of people may not have a turkey on their table because they can’t afford it."

---

Quote:

---

Doug Carlston found early success in the computer game and educational software field when he founded Broderbund Software in 1980, and launched such classics as Myst and Where in the World is Carmen San Diego? Now at the helm of Tawala Systems, Carlston is chairman of the Board of Directors of Public Radio International, and also serves on the boards of MoveOnPAC, the Long Now Foundation and the A.H. Belo Corporation. He received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, studied economics at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and earned a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

---

Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off