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A Senate Republican aide confirmed that Republicans have agreed to a Democratic proposal to raise the income threshold for increased tax rates to $450,000 for households and $400,000 for individuals.

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Apparently, Biden and McConnell agree on Clinton-era 39.6% top rate for people who make $400K and up and couples, $450K and up, according to @JohnHarwood. They've also agreed on: 40% tax on estates over $5 million.

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The Senate Democratic debt-limit bill would cut future spending by $2.2 trillion over 10 years — much deeper than the House GOP alternative, according to figures Congress‘ chief scorekeeper released early Wednesday.

The Congressional Budget Office said the plan by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would raise the government’s borrowing limit by $2.7 trillion, and cut $2.2 trillion from future spending, chiefly by limiting the amount of money spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

House Speaker John A. Boehner’s plan, meanwhile, would produce just $850 billion in savings, versus $900 billion in new debt authority, according to a CBO analysis released late Tuesday. That sent the Ohio Republican back to the drawing board to rewrite his bill to try to meet his own pledge of topping any debt increase dollar-for-dollar with new spending cuts.

Meanwhile, after seeing their spending cuts come in lower than they had expected, House Republicans canceled a vote on their bill, slated for Wednesday, and said they would rework the plan. More at http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jul/27/democrats-debt-bill-be
ats-gop-version-spending-cut/]
Republicans rejected it.

They tried again in November:

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The new deficit-reduction plan from several Democrats on the congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (the "supercommittee") marks a dramatic departure from traditional Democratic positions — and actually stands well to the right of plans by the co-chairs of the bipartisan Bowles-Simpson commission and the Senate's "Gang of Six," and even further to the right of the plan by the bipartisan Rivlin-Domenici commission. The Democratic plan contains substantially smaller revenue increases than those bipartisan proposals while, for example, containing significantly deeper cuts in Medicare and Medicaid than the Bowles-Simpson plan. The Democratic plan features a substantially higher ratio of spending cuts to revenue increases than any of the bipartisan plans.

Although the new plan thus moves considerably closer to Republican positions than any of the bipartisan plans, Republicans have been quick to reject it. This rejection likely dooms chances that Congress will be able to pass a big, bipartisan plan. The counter-offer by Republican members of the supercommittee, reflecting little or no movement on tax increases and calling for even deeper spending cuts than in the Democratic plan — including severe Medicaid cuts that would impose significant harm on low-income children, parents, and elderly and disabled people — appears to leave little room for progress.

The significance of the Democratic plan stands out clearly from its basic numbers:

¦ The Democratic plan contains $73 billion more in Medicare and Medicaid cuts ($475 billion) than Bowles-Simpson ($402 billion), and the same or a greater amount of cuts in this area than the Gang of Six plan.[1]

¦ At the same time, the Democratic plan contains $800 to $900 billion less in revenue increases than the Bowles-Simpson and Gang of Six plans.[2]

¦ The cuts in discretionary programs are as deep in the Democratic plan as in Bowles-Simpson and the Gang of Six. [3]

¦ When considered in conjunction with the discretionary program cuts enacted in the Budget Control Act of this past summer and measured against the baseline that Bowles-Simpson and the Gang of Six used, the Democratic plan results in a much greater ratio of spending cuts to revenue increases — at least 6 to 1, as Table 2 shows — than Bowles-Simpson and the Gang of Six, both of which had 2-to-1 ratios, including debt-service savings. Bowles-Simpson and the Gang of Six used a baseline that assumes that the Bush upper-income tax cuts will expire as scheduled. Relative to that baseline, those plans had $1.2 to $1.4 trillion in revenue increases, while the Democratic plan has about $400 billion. Relative to a current-policy baseline that assumes that Congress will extend all of the Bush tax cuts, the Gang of Six and Bowles-Simpson had $2.1 to $2.2 trillion in revenue increases, and the Democratic plan has $1.3 trillion. (See Table 1; under this baseline, the spending-cut-to-tax-increase ratios for the three plans are lower, but a substantial gap remains between the ratio for the Democratic plan and that for the two bipartisan plans.)

¦ The Democratic plan has $200 billion in Medicare beneficiary cuts, a level that exceeds the beneficiary cuts in Bowles-Simpson (the Gang of Six is not specific on this point) and is eight times the level of Medicare beneficiary cuts in the budget plan that President Obama released on September 19. Since half of Medicare beneficiaries have incomes below about $21,000, it would be extremely difficult to secure $200 billion in savings from increased Medicare beneficiary charges without requiring significantly larger out-of-pocket payments by beneficiaries with incomes as low as $12,000 or $15,000.More and tables at http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3605

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I guess now that their backs are against the wall, Obama doesn't feel he needs to compromise anymore. I have no doubt spending cuts will be coming along real soon; right now the focus is on stopping the tax increases.

Probably doesn't matter, since the best possibility is that Boehner won't bring it to a vote, so it can't pass the House...even if it did, getting it in place before tomorrow, what with the "72-hour limit", is pretty impossible.

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.

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A House GOP leadership aide tells CNN's Dana Bash that any decision about a House vote on the fiscal cliff measure will come after a second GOP meeting later this afternoon (a first meeting is slated for 1 p.m. ET).

“The purpose of this meeting is to review what the Senate has passed, discuss potential options, and seek member feedback," the aide said of the 1 p.m. meeting. "No decision on the path forward is expected before another member meeting that will be held later today.”
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/01/01/latest-updates-house-r
eadies-for-fiscal-cliff-vote/?hpt=hp_t1

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