Costa passes along the GOP’s latest offer:
What I’m hearing: There will be a “mechanism” for revenue-neutral tax reform, ushered by Ryan and Michigan’s Dave Camp, that will encourage deeper congressional talks in the coming year. There will be entitlement-reform proposals, most likely chained CPI and means testing Medicare; there will also be some health-care provisions, such as a repeal of the medical-device tax, which has bipartisan support in both chambers. Boehner, sources say, is expected to go as far as he can with his offer. Anything too small will earn conservative ire; anything too big will turn off Democrats.
They still don’t get it, do they?
Look: I favor a more aggressive long-term look at, say, means-testing Medicare and chained CPI. I do not believe the debt is a burden now – it may well be a vital asset for a bit – but I do think getting it down is a top priority for the future. But that kind of big future debt compromise cannot and must not be linked to a threat to blow up the global economy.
Pass a clean CR, get rid of the entire debt ceiling process, and then negotiate a Grand Bargain. Such a Grand Bargain would require a give from both sides. There’s no way Democrats should agree to tax reform without more revenue, for example. That was key to the 1986 reform. As for the lesser items being demanded, like the medical device tax, under normal circumstances, you might think of it as a trade-off worth being part of the negotiations. But, as Drum notes, these are not normal circumstances:
A month ago, Democrats might have shrugged over the device tax. Today, they know perfectly well what it would mean to let it go.
It means that when the debt ceiling deadline comes up, there will be yet another demand. When the 6-week CR is up, there will be yet another. If and when appropriations bills are passed, there will be yet another. We’ve already seen the list. There simply won’t be any end to the hostage taking. As their price for not blowing up the country, there will be an unending succession of short-term CRs and short-term debt limit extensions used as leverage for picking apart Obamacare—and everything else Democrats care about—piece by piece.
Schumer put it well over the weekend:
Someone goes into your house, takes your wife and children hostage and then, says, let’s negotiate over the price of your house.
While trashing it with a party of Miley-level nihilism.
The Dish 