Obama?s taxes, tardiness and trigger

If you?re looking for my overview of What Obama?s Budget Means, head here. This post rounds up some smaller stuff. Namely, why?s it so late, why?s it so mushy on taxes and what will happen when it hits Congress.

Here?s what White House officials will tell you about the timing: Their plan was to go after the 2011 spending fight wrapped up ? first things first, after all ? but before House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan. Ryan was scheduled for April. They figured the budget continuing resolution would wrap up in early March. It didn?t. Then they figured Ryan would push his budget back till after the CR. He didn?t. So they ended up going after Ryan.

They don?t see this as a big deal and think Ryan would?ve offered the same plan, to the same level of GOP adulation, if they?d gone first. That may or may not be correct. I think Ryan?s plan would?ve been greeted with less enthusiasm, and its flaws would?ve been more immediately glaring, if he hadn?t been seen as boldly treading where the White House had refused to tread. On the other hand, the White House might have been given a political gift here: The GOP is now left balancing draconian cuts to Medicare with a base that?s heavily tilted toward seniors who want Medicare exempted from deficit reduction. Good luck, Republican candidates in 2012!

Next up: taxes. White House officials won?t detail which expenditures they want to cut or modify. They?ll get there through negotiations, they say. Perhaps. I?m skeptical that more than a handful of Republicans will agree to raise taxes, so I don?t expect a lot to come out of those negotiations. But it?d be nice to see a bit more leadership on this issue. Tax hikes on the not-so-rich shouldn?t be so terrifying ? particularly when you?re really talking about cutting expenditures. And let?s dispense with the increasingly absurd fiction that the White House refuses to raises taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year. The excise tax on high-value health insurance raises taxes on many people making much less than $250,000 a year. Either it breaks that promise ? which is what I think ? or that promise doesn?t apply to expenditures, and so the White House can stop hiding from the specifics here.

Finally: passage. No one is dense enough to think the House GOP will have an epiphany and offer Obama a resounding ?aye.? But it?s widely assumed that Republicans ? and some Democrats ? will demand something on deficits before increasing the debt ceiling. Look for the trigger to be that thing: It is, at least in theory, a forcing mechanism on deficit reduction that allows you to put off the specific decisions of how many revenues and what sort of spending cuts until after the election. And the White House does expect that it?ll ultimately be the election that settles many of these issues.

Source: http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/click.phdo?i=0a7ec851b3db15209d349f70b33bb190

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