Reid to republicans: Forget tax cuts for the rich, and drop plans to end Medicare
. . . and we're good to go.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans will have to drop their insistence on retaining tax cuts for the rich and plans to reshape Medicare before there can be a bipartisan deal on controlling federal deficits and averting a wide-scale tax increase in January, the Senate's top Democrat said.
In a letter to GOP senators released Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid blamed congressional Republicans' "strict adherence to tea party ideology" for the two sides' failure to reach such a deal. Reid, D-Nev., also said the GOP's "blind adherence to tea party extremism is making it impossible" to reach compromise before the November presidential and congressional elections.
Reid's letter, dated Monday, was a response to one that 41 Republicans senators sent him last week. In it, they said Congress and President Barack Obama should act this year to avert an automatic increase in income and other taxes that will occur in January when tax cuts enacted a decade ago expire.
read: http://www.newstimes.com/news/article/Top-Senate-Dem-to-GOP-No-tax-cuts-for-rich-3577167.php
“Once Republicans are willing to abandon their commitment to more tax breaks for multimillionaires and special interests and their plans to end Medicare, I am confident that we can reach an agreement,” Reid, a Nevada Democrat, wrote in a letter dated May 21 to Senate Republicans. “Unfortunately, it appears that Republicans’ blind adherence to Tea Party extremism is making it impossible to reach this sort of balanced agreement before the election.”
Reid was responding to a May 17 letter sent to him by 41 Republicans, who urged Reid to act now to avert the so-called fiscal cliff waiting at the end of the year.
read: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/reid-republican-extremism-is-stalling-spending-cut-deal/2012/05/22/gIQAl2QaiU_story.html
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Byrd's sunset clause insists the Bush Tax Cuts for Millionaires and Billionaires only has to be deficit neutral. They aren't. So they have to sunset.
Now - we'll probably end up with a showdown like we did last summer. I might be pummeled for this - but we need to let them crash and burn the economy.
As it stands - we've just gotten the message that many unemployed Americans have had their unemployment stop in the past week. I say - let's call their bluff. But lets make sure we craft a message that reiterates over and over again that the sunset clause requires cuts of this nature to be deficit neutral and doncha' know . . . "Deficits 
are the 'bane' of America".
Paint them into a corner if you will . . .
