–Senate Majority Leader Reid: GOP Approach To Fiscal Talks Is ‘Wrong’
–Sen. Reid: GOP Hasn’t Made ‘A Single Proposal’ To Avert Fiscal Cliff
–Sen. Reid: ‘It’s Always Better To Settle Than To Fight’

By John Shaw

WASHINGTON (MNI) – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Monday
that negotiations on the fiscal cliff can pick up steam only after
Republicans submit a formal counter-offer in response to the plan that
President Obama offered last week.

In remarks on the Senate floor, Reid said Republicans have blasted
Obama’s plan but have offered no coherent alternative.

“They haven’t produced a single proposal,” Reid said.

“They’ve done it wrong,” Reid said in summarizing the Republican
negotiating strategy.

Reid said that once Republicans submit a “real bonafide offer” the
two parties can begin intense talks to avert the fiscal cliff.

Recalling his days as a trial lawyer, Reid said compromise is
better than pitched battle.

“It’s always better to settle than fight,” Reid said.

Obama’s plan calls for $1.6 trillion in additional revenues, $600
billion in entitlement savings and $50 billion for new infrastructure
spending.

The administration is also calling for the extension of Bush era
tax cuts for those families making less than $250,000 a year, the
extension of the two percentage point payroll tax reduction that was
first approved in 2010, a renewal of unemployment insurance benefits,
and a housing refinance provision to help homeowners who are underwater
in their mortgages.

The administration is recommending a revised procedure for the debt
ceiling in which Congress no longer would have to affirmatively approve
a debt hike. Instead, Congress would be able to block debt ceiling
increases by passing motions of disapproval, but these would take
two-thirds majorities in both chambers.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner noted Sunday that this idea was
first proposed in 2011 by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

House Speaker John Boehner, appearing on Fox News Sunday, said he
was “flabbergasted” by the administration’s fiscal plan, dismissing it
as a “non-serious proposal.”

“Right now, I would say we’re nowhere. Period. We’re nowhere,” he
said in a terse summary of the status of fiscal cliff talks.

He said Republicans made an important concession in offering to
consider new revenues, but “the White House has responded with nothing.”

Asked to spell out the GOP revenue plan, Boehner said there are a
“dozen different ways to raise revenue” but did not say which ones
Republicans support.

“There are a lot of options,” he said, adding that Republicans are
willing to accept “somewhere in the range” of $800 billion in new
revenue.

** MNI Washington Bureau: (202) 371-2121 **

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