The gang of six tax plan
Image via WikipediaDays after President Obama called for forming a bipartisan group in Congress to begin negotiating a $4 trillion debt-reduction package, the parties have not even agreed to its membership. Yet six senators — three Democrats, three Republicans — say they are nearing consensus on just such a plan.I suppose it is possible they may agree on something, but the possibility of the rest of Washington coming together is remote. Any agreement on a tax increase would be a political disaster for Republicans. Sixty-five percent of voters say they want the budget deficit reduced by reducing spending and a small minority think taxes are the answer. A tax increase would be a betrayal of the Tea Party voters who gave the GOP their House majority. The Republicans would be committing political suicide to vote for a tax increase.
Whether the so-called Gang of Six can actually deliver something when Congress returns from a recess in May could determine whether Democrats and Republicans can come together to resolve the nation’s fiscal problems before the 2012 elections.
As Mr. Obama and Republican leaders have warred publicly over the budget, this small group of senators has spent four months in dozens of secretive meetings in offices at the Capitol and over dinner at the suburban Virginia home of Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat.
The senators have weathered criticism from bloggers and even colleagues, including the leaders of their own parties, who oppose tampering with Social Security or taxes. The gang nearly collapsed several times, including two weeks ago.
The group’s oldest members — Senator Richard J. Durbin, 66, a progressive from Illinois who counts the Senate’s only socialist as a friend and ally, and Senator Saxby Chambliss, 67, a genial Georgia conservative whose nasty first campaign left lingering bad feelings among Democrats, and who is a confidant of Speaker John A. Boehner — illustrate that even with the mounting federal debt intensifying the partisan divide over spending and taxes, the severity of the fiscal threat is forging unlikely alliances.
If Mr. Durbin and Mr. Chambliss can cut a deal on Social Security and new tax revenues, their associates say, then just maybe all of Washington can come together.
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They would also be wrong, because they would be playing into the hands of the Democrat tax and spend agenda that can't even cut Planned Parenthood and wants to waste trillions on Obamacare.
The chances of Dick Durbin agreeing to anything a reasonable Republican would agree to are remote. He is a liberal ideologue. I just have no respect for him. The only reason I would ever live in Illinois would be the chance to vote against him. While I respect Chambliss and Coburn, I would be concerned about any deal they might strike with Durbin. The other two Democrats in the group, Warner and Conrad are probably alright even if they are Democrats, but Durbin is in this group to make sure they do not agree to anything that the left wing kooks can't accept. It is the left that has caused the budget problem since Obama was elected and their only solution is to tax everyone else.
If they raise taxes in their proposal, it is as good as dead. There is no way they can sell a tax increase. The only thing good that might come from such a proposal is that Democrats might embrace it and give Republicans something else to use against them in 2012.
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