What Recession? Obama, Democrats Push for Tax Hikes

From the Associated Press:

With the clock ticking toward an Aug. 2 deadline, congressional leaders return to the White House Monday for another round of budget bargaining with President Barack Obama, who has warned top lawmakers he will call daily meetings until they break their partisan stalemate.

Monday’s discussion will focus on formalizing the tentative agreements lawmakers reached in talks led by Vice President Joe Biden. Republicans say the Biden group identified more than $2 trillion in cuts, but Democrats put the true figure significantly lower–in large part because many of their concessions on spending cuts relied on the assumption Republicans would accept some new tax revenues.

The two sides appear to be no closer to a deal to stave off a potentially disastrous first-ever default on U.S. obligations than they were when the Biden talks hit an impasse last week on the tax issue.

Obama will give his take on the status of negotiations during a news conference at the White House Monday morning.

The president convened a rare Sunday meeting with lawmakers in the White House Cabinet Room, where he continued to push for a “grand bargain” in the range of $4 trillion worth of deficit cuts over the coming decade, but momentum is clearly on the side of a smaller measure of perhaps half that size. Obama continues to press for revenue increases as part of any agreement but Republicans remain stoutly opposed–despite some private hints to the contrary last week by House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

A Republican congressional aide said the White House is proposing between $1.4 and $1.7 trillion in tax increases, a total unlikely to garner any support from GOP lawmakers.

Last week, Boehner and Obama had private talks that led Democrats to believe the House speaker was willing to entertain revenue increases as part of a full overhaul of the tax code later this year in exchange for Democrats agreeing to stiff curbs on the growth of Medicare and lower increases in Social Security cost-of-living adjustments. But Boehner recoiled and abandoned the idea Saturday night in a move that rattled the talks

Read the whole thing here. The entire leftist playbook comes down to two ideas; 1. federalize it and 2. tax it. That’s it, no matter what the evidence. Its like football before they discovered the forward pass. Fail.