Fiscal Cliff: You’ll Get Nothing And Like It

You’ll Get Nothing And Like It

Dan Holler | December 22, 2012

We’ve come a long way from the days when then-Senator Barack Obama promised C-SPAN cameras would be in the room during the health care “reform” negotiations. Fortunately, there are still some journalists trying to get a peek behind the closed doors of the fiscal cliff negotiations.

This morning, the Wall Street Journal provides a detailed account of how the fiscal cliff talks “hit the wall.” The entire article is a must read, but one blurb really jumps out:

At one point, according to notes taken by a participant, Mr. Boehner told the president, “I put $800 billion [in tax revenue] on the table. What do I get for that?”

“You get nothing,” the president said. “I get that for free.”

We’ve said all along that President Obama’s offers on the fiscal cliff were outrageous. That may have been an understatement.

This morning in the Examiner, Heritage Action’s CEO Michael A. Needham explains the proper lesson from this week’s fiscal cliff “is not the unreasonable nature of conservative lawmakers, but rather the outrageousness of President Obama and his Democrat allies in Congress.” He continues:

Republicans must learn they cannot out-gimmick the Democrats; nor can they offer up enough tax increases to appease President Obama. Remember, President Obama originally called for an $800 billion tax increase. This month, after Republicans put $800 billion in tax increases on the table, President Obama requested $1.6 trillion tax increase.

It will never, never, never be enough for the political left. As they say: you’ll get nothing and like it.

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Obama to Boehner: You'll Get Nothing and Like It. #FiscalCliff

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This week, we learned the true outrageousness of President Obama and his Democrat allies in Congress.

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Boehner asked Obama his $800B in tax hikes would get. Obama: "Nothing. I get that for free."

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Please Share Your Thoughts

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000428726901 Greg Smith

All the more reason Heritage Action and allied groups need to play this more intelligently than they are. You need to understand how regular people see this cliff. I agree with your principles but greatly disagree with your tactics. Stubbornly insisting on no tax hikes on the upper 2% just keeps playing into the successful Democratic line that Republicans only care about the rich. The Republicans are in a very bad negotiating position. They lost the election (in no small part because the above perception) and if no deal is struck taxes go up anyway. Obama has not bargained in good faith because he has a huge advantage in this particular fight. The only thing the Republicans could really do is use the attention to this issue to be sure everyone understands that Obama’s “cuts” are illusionary and Obama is, frankly, lying about cutting anything. Spending is ultimately the problem and the only way to solve that is to keep attention on spending and to educate people to Obama’s lack of truthfulness.

To continue to keep the attention on taxes, especially on preventing a tax increase for the rich, is self defeating and only keeps the public’s attention just exactly where Obama wants it to be.

You’ll Get Nothing And Like It

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