CBO: ‘Fiscal cliff’ Deal Carries $4 Trillion Price Tag Over Next Decade
The Senate deal to avoid the “fiscal cliff” will add roughly $4 trillion to the deficit when compared to current law, according to new numbers from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
The CBO determined Tuesday that the package, hammered out late Monday evening by Vice President Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) would — over the next decade — come with a $3.9 trillion price tag.
The agreement, which is pending before the House after passing in a 89-8 Senate vote early Tuesday, would extend lower tax rates on annual household income under $450,000 and postpone automatic spending cuts for two months.
The extension of lower tax rates for a bulk of the nation’s taxpayers and the addition of a permanent patch to the alternative minimum tax would add roughly $3.6 trillion to the deficit over the next decade, the CBO said. Other individual, business, and energy tax extenders would add another $76 billion. The extension of unemployment benefits would cost roughly $30 billion, and the so-called “doc fix” would tally another $25 billion through fiscal 2022.
The CBO says the budget agreement will lead to an overall increase in spending of about $330 billion over 10 years.
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Storm Impedes Salvage of Shell Drilling Ship Grounded in Alaska
ANCHORAGE, Alaska – High seas and strong winds prevented crews from boarding an oil drilling ship to check for any damage after the large vessel went aground off an uninhabited island in the Gulf of Alaska.
A Coast Guard plane and a helicopter flew over the Kulluk on Tuesday, but severe weather did not permit putting marine experts on board the drilling rig, which had grounded on a sand and gravel beach in stormy seas.
Federal on-scene response coordinator Capt. Paul Mehler said the Royal Dutch Shell drilling rig is carrying about 143,000 gallons of diesel and about 12,000 gallons of lube oil and hydraulic fluid, and appeared stable.
“There is no sign of a release of any product,” Mehler said during a news conference.
A team of company, Coast Guard and local officials said they were mobilizing spill response equipment and preparing a plan in the event of a spill in the Partition Cove and Ocean Bay areas of the island. The area is home to at least two endangered species, as well as harbor seals, salmon, and sea lions.
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We Already Gave Up on the Constitution
photo credit: chuck coker
Seidman calls the Constitution “archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil.” He’s wrong, but at least he expresses his contempt for the rule of law openly and honestly, instead of insulting our intelligence with insincere twaddle about a “living document.”
The people who pretend to venerate our Constitution as a living document are most responsible for it being a dead letter. They are like parents trying to soften the blow of telling their children that Santa Claus isn’t real by saying he lives on in their hearts.
Imaginary Santas give no gifts and imaginary Constitutions protect no rights.
Seidman exercises his constitutional right to miss the point when he blames the fiscal cliff on the fact that revenue bills must originate in the House, or a “grotesquely malapportioned Senate.” But those are the Constitution’s procedural restraints, the equivalent of Robert’s Rules of Order. We got into this mess precisely by flouting its substantive limits on federal power.
Read more from this article HERE.
Sources: Enough Republicans Willing to Unseat Speaker Boehner
American Majority Action spokesman Ron Meyer told Breitbart News late Tuesday that enough House Republicans have banded together in an effort to unseat House Speaker John Boehner from his position–they just need a leader to take up the mantle.
“At least 20 House Republican members have gotten together, discussed this and want to unseat Speaker Boehner–and are willing to do what it takes to do it,” Meyer said. “That’s more than enough to get the job done, but the one problem these guys face is they need a leader to coalesce behind.”
Meyer said the conservatives have considered House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) to take the helm after Boehner is knocked out.
Read more from this story HERE.
Irony: Newspaper That Published Gun-Owners Names Now Hires Armed Guards
Guns are good for the goose but NOT for the gander.
A Clarkstown police report issued on December 28, 2012, confirmed that The Journal News has hired armed security guards from New City-based RGA Investigations and that they are manning the newspaper’s Rockland County headquarters at 1 Crosfield Ave., West Nyack, through at least tomorrow, Wednesday, January 2, 2013.
According to police reports on public record, Journal News Rockland Editor Caryn A. McBride was alarmed by the volume of “negative correspondence,” namely an avalanche of phone calls and emails to the Journal News office, following the newspaper’s publishing of a map of all pistol permit holders in Rockland and Westchester.
Due to apparent safety concerns, the newspaper then decided to hire RGA Investigations to provide armed personnel to man the location.
Private investigator Richard Ayoob is the administrator of RGA. He told the Clarkstown Police on Friday, December 28 that there had been no problems on site at the Journal News headquarters despite the massive influx of phone calls and emails.
Read more from this story HERE.
Congress Approves ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Measure
photo credit: donkey hotey
The House voted 257 to 167 to send the measure to Obama for his signature; the vote came less than 24 hours after the Senate overwhelmingly approved the legislation.
House Speaker John A. Boehner (Ohio) and most other top GOP leaders took no public position on the measure and offered no public comment before the 10:45 p.m. vote. Boehner declined even to deliver his usual closing argument, leaving House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) to defend the measure as the “largest tax cut in American history.”
The bill will indeed shield millions of middle-class taxpayers from tax increases set to take effect this month. But it also will let rates rise on wages and investment profits for households pulling in more than $450,000 a year, marking the first time in more than two decades that a broad tax increase has been approved with GOP support.
The measure also will keep benefits flowing to 2 million unemployed workers on the verge of losing their federal checks. And it will delay for two months automatic cuts to the Pentagon and other agencies that had been set to take effect Wednesday.
Read more from this story HERE.
Rep. Darrell Issa: Senators Who Voted For ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Compromise Were Drunk (+videos)
By Igor Volsky. House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA), who is joining a growing number of Republicans trying to add more spending cuts to the last-minute fiscal cliff deal and send it back to the Senate, joked that Senators may have been drunk when they passed the measure in the early hours of Jan 1.
Responding to a question on CNN’s The Situation Room about why fiscal hawks like Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) supported the measure in the Senate, Issa implied that the 89 senators voted for the compromise because of the late night partying in celebration of the New Year. Read more from this story HERE.
According to this pundit, Senators could point accusatory fingers directly back at house leadership on the drinking issue:
Boehner to Reid: ‘Go F*** Yourself’
House Speaker John Boehner couldn’t hold back when he spotted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in the White House lobby last Friday.
It was only a few days before the nation would go over the fiscal cliff, no bipartisan agreement was in sight, and Reid had just publicly accused Boehner of running a “dictatorship” in the House and caring more about holding onto his gavel than striking a deal.
“Go f— yourself,” Boehner sniped as he pointed his finger at Reid, according to multiple sources present.
Reid, a bit startled, replied: “What are you talking about?”
Boehner repeated: “Go f— yourself.”
The harsh exchange just a few steps from the Oval Office — which Boehner later bragged about to fellow Republicans…
Read more from this story HERE.