Democrats Propose Plan to Sidestep Anti-Tax Pledge

[WestVirginiaRebel]

CNBC:

WASHINGTON _ Senate Democrats — holding firm against extending tax cuts for the rich — are proposing a novel way to circumvent the Republican pledge not to vote for any tax increase: Allow all the tax cuts to expire Jan. 1, then vote on a tax cut for the middle class shortly thereafter.

The proposal illustrates the lengths lawmakers are going to in an effort to include new federal revenues in a fix for the “fiscal cliff,” the reckoning in January that would come when all Bush-era tax cuts expire and automatic spending cuts to military and domestic programs kick in.

Virtually every Republican in Congress has taken the pledge, pushed by Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, never to vote for a tax increase — a pledge both parties see as a serious impediment to a tax compromise. But if tax rates snap back to the levels of the Clinton presidency on Jan. 1, any legislation to reinstate some of those tax cuts — but not all of them — would be considered a tax cut.

“Many Republicans are starting to realize something important: On Jan. 1, if we haven’t gotten to a deal, Grover Norquist and his pledge are no longer relevant to this conversation,” Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, said this week in a speech at the Brookings Institution. “We will have a new fiscal and political reality.”

The idea inflamed passions on both sides on Tuesday, when fiscal issues careening toward Congress roiled hearings and deliberations and spurred political recriminations as Republican leaders accused Democrats of steering the economy back into recession .

“Democrats in Congress are now saying that they would rather see taxes go up on every American at the end of the year than let about a million businesses keep what they earn now,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said Tuesday. “This isn’t an economic agenda. It’s an ideological crusade.”

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Democrats look for ways to not get blamed for coming tax apocalypse.