After all the drama surrounding the potential government shutdown (I was wondering whether or not the Seattle’s Best coffee cart at the military post was going to stay open for the rest of my training), I think 2012 US House Candidate Steve Daines summed it up best by saying:
“Hard to believe the drama that played out the past few days over a paltry $38 billion of spending cuts on a $3.8 TRILLION 2011 budget,” Daines said. “This is a rounding error as we are closing in the 14.3 trillion dollar debt ceiling limit and our leaders need to turn their attention to serious spending reform before we hit the next impasse with the looming vote on the debt ceiling.”
As The Politico Playbook notes, here’s what at least one Congressional Republican leader had to say during the Sunday morning talk shows:
ERIC CANTOR, House majority leader, responds to Chris Wallace on ‘Fox News Sunday’: ‘I sit here and I listen to David Plouffe talk about their commitment to cut spending, and knowing full well that for the last two months, we’ve had to bring this president kicking and screaming to the table to cut spending. I then hear they’re going to present a plan, as far as how to address the fiscal situation. And right away, they’re insisting that we have to go about looking at raising taxes again … In my opinion, it’s really hard to believe what this White House and the president is saying.’
Of course, this latest budget settlement will last about as long as the wolf settlement between the Department of Interior and nearly a dozen environmental groups. That being said, the White House is starting to reveal signs of their own deficit reduction game plan. The easiest way to describe it: tax hikes.
More from Politico Playbook:
Plouffe said Obama will continue calling for higher taxes on the wealthy. As Plouffe put it on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” “people like him, as he’ll say, who’ve been very fortunate in life, have the ability to pay a little bit more.”
If that’s the case, we can expect Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) to be thrust back into the national spotlight as Chair of the US Senate Finance Committee. Any tax proposals would have to go through his committee. As for any entitlement reforms proposed by President Obama, well- here’s what he had to say about one plan according to the liberal blog TPM DC:
Max Baucus (D-MT), chair of the Senate Finance Committee, has seen enough of Rep. Paul Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity” to declare it dead on arrival.