When asked directly whether Mr. Romney regretted tacking to the right on immigration to appeal to conservative primary voters, the room fell silent.

Falling off my chair laughing....I LOVE these stories about Romney's post-election agonistes. Keep it up!

Congressional Republicans are still hitched to the proposed Ryan budget proposals ~ and Boehner is trapped in having to stand tall in their defense. If he strays, he could lose his Speaker's post. But the hardcore ideologues seem to forget that we had a public referendum on the Ryan plan less than 30 days ago ~ and both it and its author were rejected. What the GOP has offered in response to the Obama proposals are a very, very slightly watered down version of the Ryan plan and a re-commitment to the Norquist pledge of 'no additional taxes.' It will be interesting to see how this plays out. The irony of the matter is that standing firm will result in higher taxes for everyone on January 1st and blame will attach to that outcome with GOPers getting the lion's share.

Thomas Sowell: Fiscal Cliff Notes

Amid all the political and media hoopla about the "fiscal cliff" crisis, there are a few facts that are worth noting.

First of all, despite all the melodrama about raising taxes on "the rich," even if that is done it will scarcely make a dent in the government's financial problems. Raising the tax rates on everybody in the top two percent will not get enough additional tax revenue to run the government for ten days.

And what will the government do to pay for the other 355 days in the year?

All the political angst and moral melodrama about getting "the rich" to pay "their fair share" is part of a big charade. This is not about economics, it is about politics. Taxing "the rich" will produce a drop in the bucket when compared to the staggering and unprecedented deficits of the Obama administration.

No previous administration in the entire history of the nation ever finished the year with a trillion dollar deficit. The Obama administration has done so every single year. Yet political and media discussions of the financial crisis have been focused overwhelmingly on how to get more tax revenue to pay for past and future spending.

The very catchwords and phrases used by the Obama administration betray how phony this all is. For example, "We are just asking the rich to pay a little more."

This is an insult to our intelligence. The government doesn't "ask" anybody to pay anything. It orders you to pay the taxes they impose and you can go to prison if you don't.

Then there are all the fancy substitute words for plain old spending-- words like "stimulus" or "investing in the industries of the future."

The theory about "stimulus" is that government spending will stimulate private businesses and financial institutions to put more of their money into the economy, speeding up the recovery. But the fact that you call something a "stimulus" does not make it a stimulus.

Stimulus spending began during the Bush administration and has continued full blast during the Obama administration. But the end result is that both businesses and financial institutions have had record amounts of their own money sitting idle. The rate of circulation of money slowed down. All this is the opposite of stimulus.

What about "investing in the industries of the future"? Does the White House come equipped with a crystal ball? Calling government spending "investment" does not make it investment any more than calling spending "stimulus" makes it stimulate anything.

What in the world would lead anyone to think that politicians have some magic way of knowing what the industries of the future are? Thus far the Obama administration has repeatedly "invested" in the bankruptcies of the present, such as Solyndra.

Using lofty words to obscure tawdry realities extends beyond the White House. Referring to the Federal Reserve System's creation of hundreds of billions of new dollars out of thin air as "quantitative easing" makes it seem as if this is some soothing and esoteric process, rather than amounting essentially to nothing more than printing more money.

Debasing the value of money by creating more of it is nothing new or esoteric. Irresponsible governments have done this, not just for centuries, but for thousands of years.

It is a way to take people's wealth from them without having to openly raise taxes. Inflation is the most universal tax of all.

All the pretty talk about how tax rates will be raised only on "the rich" hides the ugly fact that the poorest people in the country will see the value of their money decline, just like everybody else, and at the same rate as everybody else, when the government creates more money and spends it.

If you have $100 and, after inflation follows from "quantitative easing," that $100 dollars will only buy what $80 bought before, then that is the same economically as if the government had taxed away one-fifth of your money and spent it.

But it is not the same politically, so long as gullible people don't look beyond words to the reality that inflation taxes everybody, the poorest as well as the richest.

Look at all of you people on here pointing fingers like little children....All the while being distracted from TRUTH....... Our elected leaders are failing US .....WE the American People. None of these people give two sh*ts about you, me or the next guy/gal. We have allowed our capital to be infiltrated by the snakes and swine of politics. I am ashamed of the way our leaders are behaving. Playing political games that affect our everyday lives.....GOD DAMN THEM ALL !!

Since this is primarily a liberal blog site, its comical to hear all of you believing that the GOP will get the lion share of the blame if we can't reach a deal by January 1. We are not worried in the least about keeping control of the House for all four years. Sure, redistricting might have something to do it. The Dems now have specifics on the GOP plan. As you can see, the GOP is committed to spending cuts that may be painful to some seniors but are a necessary sacrifice if we are to able to reduce the deficit. Remember, social security, medicare, and medicaid make up 60% of all Government spending.

The Congressional Research Office report on tax cuts and economic growth/jobs.

The results of the analysis suggest that changes over the past 65 years in the top marginal tax rate and the top capital gains tax rate do not appear correlated with economic growth. The reduction in the top tax rates appears to be uncorrelated with saving, investment, and productivity growth. The top tax rates appear to have little or no relation to the size of the economic pie.

However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution. As measured by IRS data, the share of income accruing to the top 0.1% of U.S. families increased from 4.2% in 1945 to 12.3% by 2007 before falling to 9.2% due to the 2007-2009 recession. At the same time, the average tax rate paid by the top 0.1% fell from over 50% in 1945 to about 25% in 2009. Tax policy could have a relation to how the economic pie is sliced—lower top tax rates may be associated with greater income disparities.

Much has been written about the "Deficit Clock" but I haven't read anything about what it is doing currently. It is running backwards.

Obama's Death tax adds insult to injury. One pays taxes throughout life, tries to save to pass along something, and the government takes 55% when one dies. This is just plain wrong for those of us who have families who have worked together to create to now see it passed along to a government that can't even get on the right page. One only has to glance at some bills to see the last minute add-ons akin to the "bridge to nowhere in the middle of nowhere."

Of the two proposals I think the Republican plan is the most balanced and effective approach without a doubt.

Who ever thinks government is the answer is the problem in this country.,those people don't deserve a right to vote.. Who ever is taking from the government and not in a truly need is a disgrace to the children of America. There are a lot of lazy freeloaders that will starve once the dollar collapse and they deserve to starve. Every dollar we borrow is two dollars that your children will not have for program and services when they grow up. So you who are lazy and are a pathetic slugs shame on you. I hope you takers enjoy your Ipods, tattoos, mag wheels, pimp rides and dope just remember you stole that from your children future..

Where are the cuts to DOD?

Where are the cuts to the entitlements paid to big oil, wall street, mega corporations, company owned farms?

Where are the cuts to the billions of dollars we send to other countries each years, several of those countries hate America, yet we continue to support them?

And neither party has told us what "loopholes" will be closed....my thinking is they won't be enough to stop the wealthy, the corporations from avoiding paying the tax rates they should be paying.

Not sure who the "base" is that is referenced. The one encouraging thing that I see is more concertrated discussions on the budget, debt, and the economy. I believe it was largely ignored the past four years. I am concerned about the inflation rate their wild actions and inactions are and will be causing. Two years ago I could get a dozen eggs for under a $1 and a gallon of milk for under $2 now eggs are almost $3 and milk is almost $4. Cereal also has about doubled and yet the inflation rate given is around 3% so can't figure it out. My guess is the tax rates will increase a little and the debt will increase a lot until some leadership takes over that can get things done. Incidentally, I am retired so the rates probably will not affect me much, but inflation will and the effect of taxes on prices in general.

"Playing to the Base" is the fundamental problem here. THE CAMPAIGN IS OVER. The public has sent this alledgedly adult group to DC to do a job across party lines. How about stop playing around, camapigning and JUST DO IT? Knock off the damn party posturing until the next election in 2014. ACT like adults.

Someone lock this dysfunctional group of imcompentent of petulent children into a room and lock it until the 537 of them (House, Senate, President, VP) get their jobs done. One place where the Conclave of Cardinals offer a useful lesson.

Grover is just worried he will have to get a real job and work for the first time in his life.

Let’s look at this “Fiscal Cliff” from a different perspective. For purposes of discussion here is an interesting scenario.

As a savvy politician you know this country is broke and needs to increase taxes to fund popular programs enjoyed by the voters that supported you. You are running with an annual deficit of $1.1 Trillion Dollars for the fiscal year of 2012.

Truth of the matter is that raising taxes on the wealthy will not amount to much in annual revenues (Estimates range from $40 to $60 Billion per year or about 3 % of the annual deficit).

Most of those targeted by the tax increases are business owners. Paying additional taxes adds to the cost of the products and services they provide. Let’s take a quick reality check here … Businesses don’t pay taxes people do.

Businesses react to increased cost by passing those cost along to the consumer in the form of higher prices. (We see this happening with Obamacare right now). Consumers paying more for services and products have less purchasing power and the domino effect … decreased orders and unfortunately employee layoffs.

You, as a politician, have fulfilled a campaign promise of raising taxes on the wealthy and now you are faced with the possibility of increased unemployment, slow economic growth and you haven’t made a dent in the annual debt. Now you need to extend benefits for those workers displaced by the businesses you raised the taxes on.

To accomplish this taxes must be raised on the middle class. However you can’t look like the villain in this task so the ideal thing would be to blame those increases on the other party. You need the Perfect Storm!

Hence the “Perfect Storm” is the pending increases coming January 1, 2013 … the ending of the Bush Tax Cuts. Progressives know that the Conservatives in the House will not increase taxes on the wealthy or pass a Bill extending tax cuts for the middle class without real spending cuts. Progressives also know they have no intention of decreasing real spending for their favorite programs such as Medicare, Obamacare, Social Security, Extended Unemployment Benefits or Food Stamps … (To name a few).

Letting the Country go over the Fiscal Cliff is the best plan to increase taxes on everyone. Increased revenue will be spent on additional entitlements to the few and not toward our National Debt. Conservatives will get the blame, Progressives will get the vote and we the consumer will get the annual “Dunce Award”.

Of course this couldn’t really be happening … “Right”?

I am sick of all the bickering. My family has suffered so much and I have worried so much about the next problem we have that I say lets go over the cliff or what ever you want to call it. All the statistics say that the wealthy are striping the economy dry and the only way to get them under control is to let the deal they made come to pass and and wait until the next election. When people become tools instead of part of a company you have a drastic moral dilema. We must find a way that the values this country was founded on are restored.

A Washington Post/Pew Research Center survey released Tuesday morning;

If there's no deal, according to the poll, by a 53%-27% margin people say Congressional Republicans will be more at blame than Obama, with 12% saying both sides should be equally blamed. Among independent voters, 52% would blame Republicans and 21% would point fingers at the president.

If true, why are they playing to their base? We are the base.. and we read the news. Quit playing and get the job done please. Unless of course by "base" they mean Congress. Not sure that's any less silly though.

My sincere apologies for the triple post. It's some kind of bubblegum gremlin!

We need a 1% national debt tax all revenues gos to paying off the national debt after its caped. That will fix the government union problem too by having less government jobs...call it the war on debt tax.

Republicans propose " $200 billion in savings by adjusting the cost-of-living increases in Social Security and Medicare.."

Meaning screw the old folks.

Best move now is for the House to pass a 10% cut on all current (Bush) rates below $200K/$250K and leave the Bush $200K/$250K rate as it is. Whatever the size of that tax cut, pass am across-the-board spending cut of a percentage that equates to 2.5x of the tax cut.

Then send it to Reid/Obama and let them dare to block it.

Obama and his minions want no part of a compromise. They want a blank check on the debt limit and more spending increases than they are asking for in tax increases over the next 10 years.

We elected OUR representatives in the House to counter the Obama/Reid/Pelosi destructive agenda. You fools can either have a deal that is slightly in your favor or you can go to hell and take the country down as you do.

It would seem that Speaker Boehner is between a rock and a hard place. He doesn't seem to be able to lead well enough to convince some of his people to actually negotiate with the White House and the Democrats.

The President and the Democrats really don't have to do anything at this point. It is up to Boehner and the Republicans. If they don't negotiate the country goes off the fiscal cliff and the Republicans will get the blame. If he does negotiate some within his party aren't going to like it because they don't want to give an inch in the other direction. If those folks still have enough power after the first of the year Mr. Boehner may be replaced as speaker with one of the right wing nut job types. That would make things even worse.

I love watching the weeper of the house squirm.

The fiscal cliff didn't materialize from nowhere and it wasn't created by the president. The GOP Congress created the fiscal cliff by voting to end the Bush tax cuts and cut military and domestic spending by one trillion on December 31, 2012. If they want to undo these conditions they must compromise with Mr Obama. If they refuse compromise they will be held responsible for the consequences. No amount of whining or distractions will change the facts this time. No amount of "war on Christmas" or "Benghazi " will get the American public to forget who raised thir taxes to protect the top 2%.

The teamextreemist are the problem