The high-stakes battle over the fiscal slope has detoured into a high-stakes battle over the government’s debt limit. Seeing little hope of forestalling rises top-level tax rates, Republicans have discussed a plan to relent on that and then move directly to a debt limit showdown, where they have the advantage because of the need to [...]

Here’s that discharge petition that Tim Walz put together in an attempt to bring the Senate-passed tax bill to the House floor, the one that extends Bush-era tax rates on the first $250,000 of income. Right now it has the support of 178 Democrats and no Republicans. It’s a chore figuring out which 13 Democrats [...]

Jenni LeCompte at the Treasury Department fleshes out the permanent debt limit de-fanging proposal that Tim Geithner offered as part of the initial White House term sheet on the fiscal slope. She adds the nice touch of calling it the McConnell proposal, since the Republican Senate leader offered a version of it, which actually went [...]

We talked about the Republicans’ doomsday plan, where they would pass the extension of the Bush tax cuts on the first $250,000 of income, allow the cut to tax rates above that to expire, and live to fight another day with more leverage. With talks at an impasse, and the President more aggressive specifically on [...]

Republicans may vote “present” on the bill en masse, so they don’t take ownership of a tax increase

If John Boehner put the Senate’s tax bill on the House floor for an up-or-down vote, it’s overwhelmingly likely it will pass. Members of Congress like Tim Scott have said as much. Another conservative House Republican, Representative Tim Scott, a first-term congressman, said that such a measure “could pass the House,” according to Scott’s spokesman. [...]

In the context of doing a deficit reduction deal at all, this is an extremely strong bid that Tim Geithner delivered to John Boehner today. Now we know why Boehner whined and cried all afternoon. Let’s walk through it. House Republicans said on Thursday that Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner presented the House speaker, John [...]

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), who has almost become the liaison to the left for cuts to federal health care programs in the grand bargain, gave a speech today at the Center for American Progress that included a couple important points: • Durbin sequenced the provisions of the deal, saying that Republicans would have to build [...]

John Boehner is doing what his caucus elected him to do by saying that his party won’t raise taxes. But he’s actually being pretty canny about it. After saying to Politico that the House GOP had a “mandate to not raise taxes,” today he’s changed the language somewhat. Now he’s just against higher tax rates: [...]

The Treasury Department estimates that the US will reach its debt ceiling by the end of this year. However, they still have an array of extraordinary measures that gave them about three months of headroom after hitting the limit in 2011. The Treasury said Wednesday it could take “extraordinary measures” to juggle the nation’s finances [...]

By now you’ve probably heard about or seen the consequences of Frankenstorm Sandy, especially along the Jersey Shore and in the five boroughs of the New York City metropolitan area. The evacuation of NYU Hospital. The flooding of the New York City subway system. The shutdown of the New York Stock Exchange on consecutive days [...]