Pretty simple. It doesn't raise enough revenue and is not a balanced approach. He ran on raising taxes on $250k+, the people support it, and there's already a bill that the Senate passed that does it. Why not just ask Boehner why he's not willing to bring the Senate bill up to a vote, despite the fact that multiple GOP House members have suggested he do so?
Seems like he could respond that he's argued and campaigned for extending the cuts for everyone under 250k, and then was willing to compromise up to 400k, but the republicans refuse to do so. Instead, the Republicans want to hold the rest of the tax cuts hostage so that they can unsuccessfully fight to extend the cuts for the $250,000 - $1m crowd. If you think the American people are going to hold that failure against the Democrats, moreso than the Republicans, you are mistaken. See Sam's post above.
well to be fair you should look at the popular vote. It's still pretty close to 50% in the grand scheme of things.
His answer should be: "I pursuing a balanced approach of revenue increases and cost cutting that will improve our financial situation. Hence I proposed raising taxes on the wealthiest 2% that will increase revenues that, along with cost cutting, will help solve our current financial situation. Many republicans have already joined their democrat colleagues in this approach... as soon as the republican house leadership abandons their hyper partisan blocking of our proposal we will avoid the fiscal cliff and regain our footing towards financial balance."
Boehner is an idiot and his Plan B is nothing but grandstanding. Some of the measures in the bill. – Cuts to food stamps that could knock millions of low-income Americans out of the program; – Cuts to Meals on Wheels, a program that delivers meals to seniors or other individuals who are unable to prepare their own food; – Cuts funding to health exchanges that will be created under Obamacare and funding for Medicaid included in the same law; – Cuts to the Dodd-Frank financial reform law that will yield no cost savings, but will make bailouts of big banks more likely; – Denying the Child Tax Credit to the parents of American children, if the parents are undocumented immigrants.
Alternatively, he could point out that Boehner's plan raises taxes on every tax bracket, except those making between $200k and $1million: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100331810
Haha Boehner couldn't even get enough votes in his own caucus for his stupid plan, so he had to withdraw it. So much for a political stunt to put all the blame on Obama.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/20/politics/fiscal-cliff/index.html?hpt=hp_t1 BWAHAHAHHA! basso where you at son?
We'll see, Seems there's a closed door huddle going on. It's going to be a long evening. Any bets on Boehner crying to get votes?
LOLWUT? "I screwed up and wasted a lot of our precious time, soooo... it's pretty much on you now. Psych! Where's the egg nog at !!1!!!"
I think the vote was called off after that meeting. In other news, the one bill Boehner did pass today raises spending by $1 trillion over 10 years as compared to current law. Fiscal sanity, indeed - turns out they couldn't find many cuts they really liked compared to the current sequester.
This is all so amusing. His caucus is so ridiculous they couldn't even get support to cut taxes on 99% of Americans. So now he's going to have to get Democrats' support for whatever plan is ultimately agreed on - which makes Pelosi extraordinarily powerful now. To take Commodore's question, if a journalist were to ask House GOPers why they were unwilling to extend current tax rates for non-millionaires, what should their response be?
