With broader budget talks between the speaker and President Obama stalled, the speaker told reporters he would instead force through a measure that would extend Bush-era tax cuts on income below $1 million in an effort to put pressure on the Democrat-controlled Senate to avert a year-end collision of automatic tax increases and spending cuts.
“After today, Senate Democrats and the White House are going to have to act on this measure,” Mr. Boehner said as the House prepared for a tense series of votes.
The vote on what the speaker has dubbed “Plan B” is expected to be close and is unlikely to draw much Democratic support. But Republican leaders predicted it would pass along with a separate measure to cancel automatic Pentagon cuts in 2013 with even deeper cuts to domestic programs. With just days to go before more than a half trillion dollars in tax increases and spending cuts kick in, a chasm separates congressional Republicans from President Obama, even though the latest deficit offers from the president and speaker are numerically very close.
“We House Republicans are taking concrete actions to avoid the fiscal cliff,” Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the No. 2 House Republican, said Thursday. “Absent a balanced offer from the president, this is our nation’s best option, and Senate Democrats should take up both of these measures immediately.”
Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate majority leader, accused House Republicans of wasting almost a week on “pointless political stunts” and said he would not bring the House measure to the Senate floor even if it passed the House. He was making plans to bring the Senate back after Christmas in case of a breakthrough as the fiscal deadline approached.
“Get back and start talking to the president,” he told House Republicans.
What happens next will determine whether Washington can avert that so-called fiscal cliff in the first days of the new year.
Democrats — and many Republicans — hope a vote on the Boehner backup plan will usher in a last and final round of negotiations between the speaker and President Obama over a broad deficit reduction deal that raises more than $1 trillion in taxes over ten years while locking in another $1 trillion in savings from entitlements like Medicare and other federal programs. Mr. Cantor pointedly said he will not send House members home for the holidays after Thursday night’s vote.
“It’s always darkest before the dawn,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the third-ranking Democrat. “A grand bargain is more likely than not before the end of the year.”
But other lawmakers fear most House Republicans will see passage of legislation that extends Bush-era tax cuts for household incomes below $1 million as their final offer in efforts to avert a fiscal crisis. House Republican leadership aides made clear that if the bill passes, the speaker believes the next move will have to come from Senate Democrats and the president. Senate Democrats could simply take up and pass the House bill or amend it more to their liking and send it back to the House.
“The House is going to pass a bill that protects more than 99 percent of Americans from a tax hike Democrats want to slap them with in two weeks,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate Republican leader, said Thursday. “The president is determined to leap off the cliff. Well, we’re not going to let him take the middle class with him.”
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/21/us/politics/house-moves-toward-vote-on-boehners-backup-plan.html?partner=rss&emc=rss