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Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner drew a line in the sand over taxes in defense of the Obama administration’s controversial proposal to avoid the fiscal cliff.

In an interview with CNN’s Candy Crowley on "State of the Union," Geithner insisted that any compromise on the plan he presented to congressional Republicans on Thursday, which includes $1.6 trillion dollars in tax revenue, cuts to Medicare, and another $50 billion in stimulus spending, must contain an expiration of the Bush tax cuts for income over $250,000.

“There's not going to be an agreement without rates going up,” Geithner said in the interview, which aired Sunday. “If they are going to force higher rates on virtually all Americans because they're unwilling to let tax rates go up on 2 percent of Americans, then, I mean that's the choice they're going to have to make.More at http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/12/02/geithner-no-deal-witho
ut-rates-going-up/?hpt=hp_t2]
Aaaand, maybe it's starting to work...

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Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Georgia, hit back at Grover Norquist's no-tax pledge, saying he doesn't want Washington to "dictate" how he votes and that his commitment is to his constituents.

"I think that you sent me to Washington to think for myself. And I want to vote the way you want me to vote," Chambliss told a group of Republicans in a suburb northwest of Atlanta Saturday, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution report. "I don't want to be dictated to by anybody in Washington as to how I'm going to vote on anything."More at http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/12/01/sen-chambliss-brings-t
ax-pledge-debate-outside-beltway/?hpt=hp_t2]
...or not...

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Hyperbole among GOP lawmakers and the anguished pundit class reached epic proportions this week as Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner presented the president's proposal to address the looming tax increases and spending cuts set to kick in, if a deal is not reached by January.

GOP Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, warned that the president's proposal takes us backward, moving us "significantly closer to the cliff." Anonymous Republican aides were immediately dispatched to trash the proposal of revenue increases and spending cuts as "a joke," "an insult" and "a complete break from reality."

These remarks, coming on the heels of a sound rejection of Mitt Romney's fidelity to America's 1%, indicate that the ones suffering from a break with reality are the Republicans deaf to the mandate of this election. Their delusional commitment to eviscerating social insurance programs -- Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- while allowing the rich to get richer shows a remarkable disconnect from the shared experience of most Americans.

Decades of underinvestment in our country by the wealthy class, two Bush wars paid for on credit, and an unrestrained culture on Wall Street that treated the economy like a poorly run casino has unarguably left America strapped for cash. The only question at hand is whether we'll finally be treated to genuine accountability and sound fiscal policy in this deal.

Not if the Republicans get their way. Their endless exaggeration of the certain doom that awaits us on the other side of the fiscal cliff is intended once again to force middle class and poor Americans to accept yet one more bum deal so that the wealthy don't have to budge an inch. More at http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/01/opinion/hogue-fiscal-cliff/index.html?hp
t=hp_t2

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...But this time, they do so at their own political peril.

The social divide that has enabled their antics is becoming perilously unbalanced. A full 60% of Americans support letting the Bush-era tax cuts expire for those making over $250,000 a year. This includes 63% of Independents. On the spending side, polls show that most Americans don't want to raise the eligibility age for Medicare.

The polling jury is less clear on the question of Medicaid, the program that serves a population that is disproportionately young, disproportionately female and disproportionately people of color. By definition, these people are poor. This is the population that has suffered the most in an economic recession.

But instead of putting genuine effort into ways to help millions of Americans, some in the GOP chose to demonize them as freeloaders. While scapegoating and race baiting might dent the polling popularity of Medicaid, it won't change the fact that slashing these services will mean the difference between eating and starving, having rent and being homeless. And cutting social security won't change the fact that many elderly Americans depend on the fund for 90% of their income.

At a time when economic inequality is the highest it's been since the Great Depression and federal tax rates are lower than they were under Ronald Reagan, the party that fails to support the will of the people will pay a price.

But when push comes to shove, the GOP has greater masters to serve. The Sheldon Adelsons of the 2012 campaign are being followed by Fix the Debt, a corporate front group most aggressively holding lawmakers' feet to the fire to cut benefit programs. While the group as a whole takes no official position on tax revenue, the membership roster is a veritable who's who of warriors for corporate tax cuts. The money to run this country has to come from somewhere, and this group nominates the old, the sick, and the poor to foot the bill.

Following the advice of this cabal seems like a dicey proposition morally and politically, a fact that's not lost on all GOP lawmakers. Some are starting to prioritize their own reelection prospects over party fidelity. Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma broke rank recently to argue that his party should go along with President Obama's plan of taxing the wealthiest Americans.

Put aside for a moment the grave moral injustice of forcing the middle class, the poor and the elderly to foot the bill for an economic mess not of their making. Pursuing concessions like these barrels down a political path that has been shown to be an abject failure. Two-thirds of Americans believe that our representatives in Washington will act like "spoiled children" through these negotiations, with most people blaming Republicans for the standoff.

And this is where the fiscal cliff negotiations makes strange bedfellows, because for once I find myself agreeing with Rand Paul's assessment that the GOP risks becoming extinct like dinosaurs, if they don't change course. http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/01/opinion/hogue-fiscal-cliff/index.html?hp
t=hp_t2

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Gibson's implying that cutting capital gains taxes raises tax revenues by the mere time series correlation he cited was a stretch. Much of the short-run response to changes in the capital gains tax rate are for tax timing purposes. This is a well-known fact...

There is no doubt some revenue feedback will occur over the long-run from lower capital gains tax rates spurring investment, but most estimates would say that we are currently on the left side of the Laffer Curve with respect to capital gains.

But Obama didn't question this assumption made by Gibson. He seemed to be saying, "Okay Charlie, even if this is true, the rate should still be 28 percent."

In summary, Obama should have questioned the assumption made by Gibson in the question. But then again, Gibson shouldn't have asked the question the way he did.

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President Obama’s effort to accommodate the Catholic Church by altering his administration’s rule on birth control coverage has not appeased the church, congressional Republicans or GOP candidates trying to take his job next year. http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/obamas-contraception-c
ompromise-falls-flat-with-bishops-gop/2012/02/13/gIQAt6HSBR_story.html

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The $858 billion tax compromise he cut with resurgent congressional Republicans... http://articles.nydailynews.com/2010-12-17/news/27084774_1_tax-comprom
ise-president-obama-tax-negotiations

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Republicans were able to force significant spending concessions from Democrats in exchange for putting to rest some of the vexing social policy fights that had held up the agreement. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/09/us/politics/09fiscal.html?pagewanted
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Outlays for discretionary programs, which include defense spending, would be cut by $741 billion. And $20 billion would be cut from education loan initiatives. It would also cut student loan funding by $22 billion over 10 years. http://money.cnn.com/2011/08/01/news/economy/debt_ceiling_deal_cbo/ind
ex.htm]
Then you can also go back to April of 2011:

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The CR cuts $42 billion relative to FY 2010 levels for non-defense spending, but couples that with a $4 billion increase in defense spending, for a net decrease of approximately $38 billion. The latest CR also includes an across-the-board cut of 0.2 percent to all non-defense discretionary accounts.Specifics at http://sustainableagriculture.net/blog/congress-passes-final-fy11-cr/

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We could go all the way back to the health care fiasco and how many, many compromises Obama and the Dems made on THAT, in hopes of getting some (ANY) agreement on the right...which they did not get.

During ALL that time, has one single dollar been agreed to by the right? Not a penny. So they've gotten quite a lot already, are now demanding more, all the while refusing flatly to deal with the Bush Tax Cuts, which were written to expire in 10 years. They've done damned well.

Which is precisely the point of this thread: That Obama has compromised over and over in hopes of gaining something bipartisan, while the Republicans have flatly stated they will not compromise at all. The flimsy "compromise" they are suggesting now is closing loopholes and ending deductions--BUT, only if the fax rate is LOWERED, and with no specifics on which loopholes, etc., they would close. They refuse to be specific, and one of the deductions they might close would have a severe effect on the middle class, while not affecting the rich that much.

In other words, my initial statement stands. Obama and the Dems have compromised numerous times; the GOP hasn't compromised on taxes even ONCE; it's well past time Obama stopped trying to pacify them with compromises and demand they put something CONCRETE on the table regarding the Bush Tax Cuts for the rich.

That was merely an exercise in debate, because I'm fairly sure you won't accept it and will go off on some tangent again having nothing to do with the word "compromise". Ergo it is the only response I will bother to make to your attempt to show Obama didn't "compromise" because he made two remarks about fairness.

Tit for tat got us where we are today. If we want to be grownups, we need to resist the ugliness. If we each did, this would be a better reflection on Firefly and a more welcome place. I will try.