White House unleashes assault on GOP’s ‘Plan B’

The White House has launched a full-bore public assault on the GOP’s “Plan B” fiscal-cliff proposal, marking a sudden end to its repeated claims that closed-door talks are the best route to a budget deal.

“The President urges the Republican leadership to work with us … instead of engaging in political exercises that increase the possibility that taxes go up on every American,” said a morning statement by White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer.

“The American people are watching closely and deserve no less,” Pfeiffer insisted.

The GOP’s so-called “Plan B” proposal is a small-scale fallback in case of a continued stalemate over the stalled “Fiscal Cliff” talks between President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner.

Plan B would extend the tax cuts signed in 2001 by President George W. Bush and extended in 2010 by President Barack Obama for all beneficiaries except people earning more than a million dollars per year. Plan B does not address other issues, such as planned budget cuts for 2013, nor a series of spending programs and tax cuts sought by the White House.

The GOP plans to vote on the measure, and then send it to the Senate for a vote.

However, Democratic leaders in Congress want to use closed-door negotiations to win a big tax increase, and furiously oppose the Plan B proposal. The Democratic majority in the Senate can bottle up the proposal, ensuring that Democratic Senators won’t have to vote for or against the legislation.

On Tuesday, White House spokesman Jay Carney told a reporter that the White House did not want to reverse its previous support for closed-door talks by engaging in public criticism of GOP proposals.

“I’m certainly not trying to antagonize the [GOP] … absolutely not, absolutely not,” Carney said.

The president “has demonstrated good faith and a willingness to meet Speaker Boehner and the Republicans halfway in an effort to achieve what would be a very significant agreement that would be of benefit both to the middle class and to the economy,” he claimed.

The GOP Plan B fallback was developed because Obama and Boehner are deadlocked over rival 10-year budget proposals.

Following Obama’s victory in the 2012 election, Boehner has offered to accept $1 trillion in tax increases, but in exchange, wants reforms that will trim just $1 trillion from budget plans that promise to spent $45 trillion by 2022.

However, Obama is looking for more taxes than spending cuts, plus funding for various money-losing Democratic projects, plus a big stimulus, plus a huge increase in the nation’s credit limit. He wants the credit limit increase because his big budgets require roughly $1 trillion in new debt every year, adding up to roughly $25 trillion in debt by 2022.

"marking a sudden end to its repeated claims that closed-door talks are the best route to a budget deal.", "“The President urges the Republican leadership to work with us … instead of engaging in political exercises"

Note that when the House of Representatives finally decides to act on a proposal of its own, the assault begins. The administration (and the democrats in the senate apparently) do not like regular legislative order. Obama wants to be both president and legislator. But he has no power to decide what legislation will be (aside from persuading individual legislators) and Boehner has continually and foolishly continued to meet with him.

It's clear that the oligarchs do not want the people, through their representatives, to play any part in the making of law. They want to decide ahead of time what will be, then strong-arm it through tht legislative bodies so the president can sign it. We saw this previously in the Cut, Cap and Balance/Debt ceiling fight, where the House acted and then Boehner and McConnell undermined them with their silly plan.

The House should act. Period. Then the Senate should act. Then the House and the Senate should reconcile their proposals, pass the reconciliation and send an aggreed on bill to the prosident, who can either accpept it or reject it. This is regular legislative order.

Obama doesn't seem to like the legislative processes that have deveoloped over thousands of years to preserve liberty and keep the people involved in enacting the laws under which they are supposed to live and obey. The two bodies of the Congress are mere technicalities to him, and impediments to his will.

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