Some Republicans are feeling smug that they are going to win the war on cutting earned benefits for the middle class, by losing the battle on tax cuts.
The rumored strategy is they will concede that taxes should be extended for the middle class (which is to say everyone, since all taxpayers get a tax break on the first $250,000) and use that concession as a bargaining chip next year to get everything they want by tying budget negotiations to increasing the debt ceiling.
The President, speaking at a business roundtable, has made it very clear, that he is not going to go along with that in any way, shape or form.
There have been reports--and these are not necessarily confirmed--and maybe some of you have more insight than I do on this, that the Republicans go ahead and let the middle class tax cuts get extended, the upper income tax cuts go up, otherwise we don't get a deal and next year we come back and the thinking is the Republicans will have more leverage because there will be another vote on the debt ceiling and we will try to extract more concessions with a stronger hand on the debt ceiling.http://online.wsj.com/...I have to just tell you, that is a bad strategy for America. It's a bad strategy for your businesses it's not a game that I will play.
Most of you were involved in discussions and watched the catastrophe that happened in August of 2011.
Everybody here is concerned about uncertainty. There's no uncertainty like the prospect of the United States of America, the largest economy, that holds the world's reserve currency, potentially defaults on its debts.
So I want to send a very clear message to people here: We are not going to play that game next year.
If Congress in any way suggests that they're going to tie negotiations to debt ceiling votes and take us to the brink of default once again as part of a budget negotiation--which by the way we have never done in our history until we did it last year--I will not play that game. We've got to break that habit before it starts.