Alright, here's your compromise.
1. Republicans agree to raise the debt limit in a nearly clean bill, with its only additional bit of legislation stating that if the following resolutions don't pass the bill is invalid.
2. Democrats must agree to pass a resolution requiring that the 2012 and 2013 budget must be balanced in regards to expenditures compared to revenue, IE that spending will match predicted revenue. Included in this resolution is that no tax increases will be allowed to be considered until FY 2013.
3. Democrats and Republicans agree to form a bipartisan committee to draft a bill to reform the tax code and close loopholes in such a way to increase efficiency in the system while maintaining the current effective tax rates
4. Republicans agree to a 1% per tax bracket (starting with the 2nd bracket) increase that does not go into effect until FY 2014 AND is rendered invalid if spending in 2012 or 2013 exceeds both the budget and taken in revenue.
For Democrats:
This gets the Debt Ceiling raised with a relatively clean bill. You also have a tax increase signed in and ready to occur but also doesn't happen immedietely giving Obama a bit of cover regarding taxes in the near term. The tax increase would take those making 175K or more a year up 4% and those making over 380k up 5%.
For Republicans:
You get a balanced budget for the next two years with significant spending cuts and political ammo to potentially push for entitlement reform. You get one and a half years free of having to worry about any tax increases. And the tax increase that will come in 2014 will only come if the budget actually remained balanced for 2 years meaning only if the government actually acts seriously regarding spending.
Would this be an acceptable compromise for you?
no.
1 Balancing the Budget in one fiscal year is something that can't be achieved without severely slashing DOD spending (as in, a complete retreat from the Middle East, Asia, and Europe), severely slashing
current benefits for seniors. Those people have planned their lives around a fixed income. I'm all for chaining future benefit
increases to inflation rather than CPI, but that's a long term slow expenditure reduction, not the kind of slash that gets you a balanced budget.
2. given that the measure would be unspecific about what get's "cut" (and what is considered a "cut" - currently the Democratic position is that they can "cut" "spending in the tax code" by increasing effective tax rates), all that would happen is that we would get to this point next year and everyone would be in favor of deep cuts in general but none specifically, putting us right back where we are today. Democrats would
love to have a knock-down-drag-out fight where they can posture themselves as the saviors of old people's benefits, and I don't see any way they would actually agree to the cuts that would be necessary under the legislation that
they agreed to.
3. So we end up precisely where we are today; deep in debt and diving ever deeper. But, you say, that invalidates the original debt ceiling hike. So what? the money at that point is already borrowed.
4. Tax increases. given the ephemeral nature of the "cuts" (which never happen and never will happen), there is no way I support tax hikes that
will happen sure as the increased debt will.