When Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, began negotiations with President Obama over how to resolve the fiscal cliff, he promised conservatives that he would make a principled stand on tax rates. Last Friday, he surrendered those principles by offering Obama a tax rate hike on incomes over $1 million. That concession, along with other measures capping loopholes and deductions, would raise approximately $1 trillion over ten years. In exchange, Obama has now offered to change how the federal government calculates inflation when determining Social Security benefits. How much would this ‘reform’ cut entitlement spending by? $122 billion. Over ten years. That is about ten days worth of federal government spending. That is the big spending concession Boehner will attempt to sell his Repblican colleagues today.
“The two sides are now dickering over price, not philosophical differences,” The New York Times reports. So much for principle.
