What size tax rate increase will GOP swallow

Conn Carroll:

Taxes are set to go up by $4.6 trillion on January 1st. That is the law of the land. Yesterday, the official tax scorekeeper of Congress, the Joint Committee on Taxation, released their analysis of Speaker John Boehner’s, R-Ohio, Plan B. According to the JTC, Plan B would cut taxes by $4.1 trillion over ten years.

It should come as no surprise that Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., whose entire political career has been devoted to enlarging the size and scope of the federal government, is whipping hard against Plan B. “I haven’t seen her work a vote this hard since health care” in 2010, one top Democratic aide told Politico. Pelosi is expected to get every member of her Democratic Caucus to vote against the bill.

To address Republican concerns that Plan B does not undo the scheduled $500 billion cuts to Defense spending, Boehner has also scheduled a vote on a bill from House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis. Ryan’s bill not only replaces the Defense spending cuts with other cuts to domestic spending, but also shrinks government even more. “This bill replaces the sequester for one year with responsible spending cuts, that protect our national security, and provides an additional $200 billion in savings over ten years, Majority Whip Eric Cantor spokesman Rory Cooper told Politico. “This is yet another step House Republicans have taken this year to address the real fiscal problem in Washington, which is spending.”

So not only does Plan B cut taxes by $4.1 trillion, but it also now preserves the $1.2 trillion in cuts Republicans fought for last year. And it cuts another $200 billion in spending. “The speaker’s plan is the best we are going to do and I think people recognize that,” Rep. Bob Turner, R-N.Y., told National Review.

...

My own Plan B was a little different, but not enough to thumb my nose at this deal.  Some argue that there will still be time to retroactively put cuts in place in January.  That maybe so but it will not reflect anymore leverage than we now have.  We give up the argument that voting against the bill would be voting for a tax increase, and we give Obama the claim that he supported tax cuts if we allow the rates to go up.

Phillip Klein explains why Obama may still try to cut a deal.

...

So, why would Obama want to cut a deal with Boehner rather than go over the cliff? Why would he throw a lifeline to Boehner when he has the upper hand and has good reason to believe he would win the post-cliff PR battle? Though there are many reasons to believe that Obama would prefer to go over the cliff at this point, there are also plenty of reasons to believe that he doesn’t want to. Past behavior is often a reliable predictor of future behavior. In the past, whenever there’s been a showdown with Republicans, Obama has chosen to cut a deal. Also, just as businesses often agree to settle lawsuits to avoid long-drawn out legal fights (even if they think they would win them), Obama may just want to get this over with. He may want to remove uncertainty — economic uncertainty, the uncertainty as to whether a long protracted fight does begin to reflect poorly on his leadership, and so on. He may not want the distraction as he starts his second term. And perhaps he’d be especially inclined to cut a deal if he could win an extension in the debt ceiling, delaying another showdown.
...

I am not encouraged by the arguement, because I think Obama is content to raise taxes on everyone and blame Republicans while getting what he really wanted to begin with.  Recall that during the campaign while he gave lip service to only raising taxes on "the rich," he also claimed that the Clinton rates achieved prosperity so Republicans can challenge him to take responsibility for any economic decline by saying the tax rates are his and the spending cuts under the sequester will still be greater than Clinton era budgets.