So President Obama and John Boehner are set to meet with congressional leaders in an 11 o'clock meeting at the White House to continue their negotiations over a long-term deficit plan and how to raise the debt limit.
The talks are about as opaque as opaque can be, so nobody knows what's really going on, but according to a flurry of leaks reported in publications ranging from The New York Times to TPM, negotiators are aiming for a much more significant deficit reduction number than previously reported: $4 trillion, roughly twice as much as had been previously dicussed.
The two new question marks center on Social Security and taxes.
On Social Security, The Washington Post reports the administration has put cuts on the table by agreeing to accept a change in the way that COLAs are calculated, a change that would reduce growth in Social Security benefits, as long as the same mechanism were applied to tax brackets, a change that would increase tax revenue. Politico's David Rogers reports that administration officials have pushed back against this report, saying it doesn't represent a "major change," but by disputing not whether the change is going to happen but rather whether it would be "major," it seems like the reports are serious.
On taxes, The New York Times reports Boehner aides have said Boehner is ready to accept more than $1 trillion in new revenues as part of a bigger deal, but they stopped short of saying they'd support higher tax rates. Eric Cantor said House Republicans would agree to close loopholes, but only if increased revenue were used to reduce taxes elsewhere. In other words, he's insisting on no net increase in revenue.
There's also been some discussion about whether Republicans have agreed to discuss expiring the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, a prospect Republicans have dismissed. That, of course, is a bizarre discussion to have because under current law, those tax cuts will expire at the end of 2012 anyway. In that sense, the only thing that could be on the table would be an extension of the tax cuts, and the question would be whether the entire Bush tax cut package would be extended, or just the tax cuts for below $250,000. Outside of the context of comprehensive tax reform, however, the prospect of those tax cuts being addressed in this deal seem remote.