CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
Nov. 3, 2011 – 11:07 p.m.
Boehner Remark May Open Tax Door
By Paul M. Krawzak and Richard E. Cohen, CQ Staff
The joint committee on deficit reduction remained deadlocked as the week drew toward a close, even as remarks Thursday by House Speaker
Boehner, R-Ohio, said during a meeting with reporters that “there is room for revenue” in the committee’s deliberations, suggesting that opposition to finding some savings on the tax side of the budget equation is not absolute.
Democrats did not interpret the statement as plowing any new ground. And Boehner’s comments did not seem to advance the joint committee’s work. The panel has less than three weeks until its Nov. 23 deadline to produce legislation to reduce the deficit by at least $1.2 trillion over a decade.
“I’ll believe it when I see it on paper,” said a Democratic Senate leadership aide.
“Republicans have yet to show the courage to put the interests of the middle class and our economy ahead of their blind adherence to Grover Norquist’s pledge.”
In the last week especially, Democrats have hammered Republicans for opposing higher taxes, and blamed that stance on the large number of GOP lawmakers who have signed the Americans for Tax Reform pledge against an increase. Norquist is president of the anti-tax organization.
Boehner himself continued to warn against what he said would be the effects of a tax increase. “Raising taxes hurts our ability to grow the economy” and jobs, he said, echoing a common Republican refrain.
He did not elaborate on what he meant by revenue, and said “there clearly is a limit to the revenues that may be available.” Boehner’s comments came in a pen-and-pad session with about two dozen reporters in his conference room a few hours after his weekly on-camera news conference.
The speaker also tied discussions of revenue to broad changes in government entitlement programs. “Without real reform on the entitlement side, I am not going to put any revenue on the table,” he said. “There are changes that need to be made in each of them.”
Standoff Persists
The Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction has been in a standstill since last week, when Democrats and Republicans traded comprehensive plans that led the two sides to polarize further as they rejected each other’s proposals. The committee has not met since Oct. 27 and no meetings are on its calendar.
Still, panel members continue to reach across party lines in attempts to restart the stalled negotiations. Sens.
A congressional aide familiar with the deliberations indicated that such one-on-one and small group sessions are driving the negotiations for now.
Boehner Remark May Open Tax Door
“There has been every imaginable iteration of informal meetings and conversations on the floor, and over Chinese food, to look for common ground and try to build a consensus,” the aide said. “They’ve probed big plans, medium plans, and small plans, and there’s been an unspoken agreement to keep talking and not give up on big solutions until everyone believes that option has been exhausted.”
Top congressional leaders have become even more involved in the joint committee’s deliberations over the past couple of days. On Thursday, Republican members of the committee met with Senate Minority Leader
And, although the House will be in recess next week, Boehner is expected to stay closely involved in the negotiations.
Unlike some Republicans, Boehner has not said one way or the other whether he might accept a tax overhaul that would register as a net tax increase through traditional scorekeeping methods.
Some GOP leaders privately doubt the willingness of Democrats to undertake a large-scale tax code rewrite, which might involve reduced tax rates for high-income earners and the scaling back of popular tax breaks, such as the deduction for mortgage interest payments.
“Senate Democrats have struggled all year to find consensus on taxes,” a GOP leadership aide said. “Their lack of unity is a problem. We can’t make tax policy decisions without direction on how to raise the revenue. We don’t want to use the same tax code with its problems.”
It is generally understood that if the joint committee embraces the idea of a tax overhaul, it would occur in two stages. Most, and perhaps all, of the work would be done next year by the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance panels after receiving instructions from the joint committee.
Pressure Rising
The deficit reduction panel continues to be pressured from all directions.
Thirty-three Senate Republicans signed a letter Thursday promoting a package that incorporates a tax code rewrite that would reduce rates, yield “no net tax increase,” overhaul entitlement programs and balance the budget in 10 years.
Among the signers were
The Gang’s $4 trillion proposal has been widely described as including a net increase in tax receipts on top of additional revenue generated by economic growth, which raises a question about whether the Republican members of the Gang have changed their position on taxes.
John Hart, a spokesman for Coburn, said the letter reflects what Coburn’s “ideal solution has always been,” meaning to bring the debt under control without a net increase in taxes. “Would he let the ideal be the enemy of the achievable? Not likely,” Hart said.
Boehner Remark May Open Tax Door
Hart said that “the only way to test where Republicans really are on revenue is for Democrats to put forward serious entitlement reform. That hasn’t happened.”
Senate Budget Chairman
“Those of us who have been involved in negotiations, we know there’s an ebb and flow to these things,” Conrad said. “And how things are at the moment is not terribly dispositive.” The current deadlock might end with a breakthrough, he said. “Sure. It might not, but it could. That’s the way these things are,” he said.
And Sen.
The joint committee’s window is also beginning to close. The Congressional Budget Office has urged the panel to wrap up its proposals early this month to allow enough time for their budgetary effects to be estimated by the Nov. 23 deadline. But the pace of the negotiations means some ideas may not be submitted for review any time soon.
House Minority Leader
Sam Goldfarb, Alan K. Ota and Joseph J. Schatz contributed to this story.