G.O.P. Contemplates Doomsday Scenario

by Stuart Shapiro

Only the House GOP would consider extending tax cuts only for those who earn under $250K, “doomsday,” but given that they seem to be losing the tax cut battle they have come up with a “doomsday scenario.”

It’s quite simple:  House Republicans would allow a vote on extending the Bush middle class tax cuts (the bill passed in August by the Senate) and offer the President nothing more:  no extension of the debt ceiling, nothing on unemployment, nothing on closing loopholes.  Congress would recess for the holidays and the president would face a big battle early in the year over the debt ceiling.”

Two senior Republican elected officials say this doomsday plan “is becoming the most likely scenario…

President Obama would probably have to sign the extension and then the battle would go on into January as the House Republicans would, for the second time in two years, threaten the nation’s fiscal credibility in order to get their way.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.