President Barack Obama is scheduled to meet Friday with the top leaders of both parties to start negotiations on a deal to avert the fiscal cliff. Already, both sides are blaming the other for a lack of action on the more than $500 billion in tax increases and across-the-board spending cuts scheduled to take effect at the end of the year.
Poll: Americans say Obama should focus on economy
The President wants $1.6 trillion in tax increases over a period of a decade in order to pay down the deficit.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says that's a non-starter.
"Let's be clear - an opening bid of $1.6 trillion just isn't serious," McConnell said. "It is more than Simpson-Bowles or any other bipartisan commission has called for. It has been unanimously rejected in the House and Senate. It is twice as much as the White House seemed ready to agree to during last summer's debt ceiling talks. It's a joke."
OutFront tonight: Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL).
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What if on the spending side there's a 10% cut on domestic agencies, freeze on Congressional pay, cut the federal travel budget, and a ban on all "pork barrel" projects & on the tax side: lower corporate rates, cap deductions to whatever can be agreed upon BUT a tax on carried interest & we phase out the mortgage interest deduction. If the hedge funders complain, you can just remind them about the Greatest Generation giving their lives, sweat, tires, and nylons for people on the other side of the world, in most cases.