Your comment reflects what Rasmussen is finding. People are not seeing the argument in terms of deficit reduction, but in terms of the fairness of the Bush Tax Cuts.

“Republicans are losing the debate because the fiscal cliff talks are about fairness rather than about taxes and deficit reduction. Most voters (56 percent) believe the U.S. economy is unfair to the middle class. That’s the issue Obama is talking about and Republicans are ignoring. ”

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics

“The question is, what will McConnell do?”

To answer that, gameplay the best reasonable outcome for American and the GOP: A) There is a deal and B) it protects the most taxpayers. The Democrats will need that “top rate goes up’ headline to come on board, but GOP can win on side issues – no more spending, real cuts, fix AMT, no increases on middle class investors (protect qualified div rate, maybe it goes to 20%) etc.

McConnell should filibuster any deal that doesnt come close to the kind of bill Boehner was putting together in ‘plan B’. Allow tax hikes above $1m (or maybe close to that), but promise nothing out of the Senate (via filibuster) that isnt a TRUE bipartisan compromise that could win 20-30 GOP votes.

Anything Obama ‘offers’ simple say “pass it through the Senate first”.

“dump gas on the GOP House civil war.” Nothing quite unites the GOP like Obama!

A) property tax deduction is nothing new B) other states have HIGHER property taxes.
$4600? lol, I’m at $15000, almost as much as my mortgage.

“McConnell should filibuster”, but will he? I would be very surprised if he does, far more likely that he will cut a deal with Reid and pass the buck to Boehner. If McConnell stands firm, well that would be news, because he hates to take the heat himself.

“Nothing quite unites the GOP like Obama.” That’s the problem, Obama is the only thing uniting the GOP, and he is history. Obama won, the GOP lost, and Barack Obama will never stand for election again. What unites the party going forward? Immigration, gun control, social issues, tax policy? Even deficit reduction creates conflicts as soon as cuts are put on paper, just look at defense spending or the farm bill.

Opposition to Obamacare is the only policy issue uniting Republicans. Is that enough? Of course not! Then what should Republicans do? They need to hash out where they stand going forward, “evolve” where they must, stand firm where the good of the Nation demands it, and push forward. What is available now is the same path Churchill took. Defeated and isolated, he clarified his positions, publicly expounded his stance, stood by his guns, and waited for history to turn his way. It remains to be seen if the GOP has either the character or the luck of a Churchill.

There are two things that can happen from the deep cuts you propose:

1) (ideally) The programs which receive cuts become more efficient and learn that they didn’t need as much money as they had to do the jobs they were assigned to do, or
2) (more likely) They don’t get enough money and therefore become even less efficient by becoming sponges for wasted investment and holes for deficits.

I don’t believe that flooding a program with money will solve a problem – but I’m pretty positive that too much austerity can cause problems too: the American people rely on many Government programs (’tis the reason many conservatives are fighting for less Government in the first place), so simply cutting a program’s available funds has its risks to those people who use them and to the program’s processes itself. Furthermore, many Government agencies (who run the various programs) output deficits every year already – so merely cutting more money from them offers no incentive to change at all; they’ll continue to do the job they were assigned to do and proceed to add to the debt – but now they’ll be even less efficient with less money to spare, and they’ll also accumulate higher deficits. At that point, it’s better just to cut programs entirely (but good luck without the support of the people who use them and the Dems in congress; that’s a losing battle if I ever did see one).

All in all, and generally speaking, forcing people to breath less by strangling them is not an appropriate, or applicable, solution. Government is bigger now, therefore it is also more complex. We needn’t be placated by over-simplicity when these problems require a sharper eye and higher concern.

Risk vs reward and the conditions involved here are still debatable – don’t get me wrong – I just wanted to make this possible outcome apparent.

My question is this: $1.3 trillion in cuts is BIG talk – but (ironically) talk is cheap. Where are we cutting $1.3 trillion from?

Actually there is the one I expect Obama to announce:
3) We’re out of money, so the GOP is forcing me to quit paying active-duty troops.

That’s what ALWAYS happens at the local level when politicians don’t get the money they want – they announce the first cuts will be to what people need most (cops/fire/safety), while they never say squat about their pet programs they want to grow.

Well, tepid growth, stagnating income, and rising everyday costs are definitely unfair to the middle class…

Let taxes on investment go up, to the full level, matching income tax!!! I’d like to see Democrats’ jaws drop when revenues plummet instead.

Property taxes are not state income taxes my fellow Texan. I bet most states have property tax deductions but not all have state taxes.

More theatrics is what we got from his return. I tell you the acting never ends with this prez. Today he summons the Leaders to the WH as an encore to his 12/24 aloha speech of “it wasn’t me” and nothing will ever be his responsibility and we got the same tired speech today. The man is insane.

I seem to recall during some earlier debate (debt ceiling maybe?) that troops were told their pay might get cut off.

What can I say? Leave no rock unturned is my motto.

I just looked at Coburn’s Waste Index for 2012, and the amount sums up to $4,757,322,000. That’s hardly .0048 Trillion…

Not even close! I find that people who say the word Trillion far underestimate how large that number actually is…