And that's the deadlock. This is uncovered by cafeSentido ('staff' byline) in dissecting the Speaker's appearance and words on Fox News with Chris Wallace. Boehner insisted on a "bipartisan framework" based on cut, cap, and balance which does not have Senate or Democratic support.
Of course, we know that the minority-majority in the House (elected in 2010 with 41% turnout on average across 50 states) represents our greatest interest, no doubt, and so it can hold the economy as a hostage.
[Data source from: elections.gmu.edu/Turnout_2010G.html
and elections.gmu.edu/Turnout_2008G.html ]
With the so-called election mandate, the GOP is dug in now to extend the Reagan economic tax-cut legacy of the 80s:
The chart is from an article in Fortune by Warren Buffett - 2003 (graph viewable also here (PDF) or here.)
The 80s decade begat the RR tax-cut, job export policies (the notorious "twin deficits" of trade and federal budgeting) that FLIPPED the US abruptly to net debtor nation status.
This was the natural outcome of "less is more" tax optimist ideology.
The roaring 80s was the first modern time when the country wasn't at war that the U.S. turned to finance the economy by giving foreigners ownership of more assets of ours than we had a stake in theirs.
The huge 2001 and 2003 tax cuts under Bush didn't help (way cool graphic)
The great irony is, these were never really tax cuts for everyone. The reductions were carved out in each decade by nudging taxes higher for others. The Payroll tax hike of 1983 amounted to a cash transfer to wealthy beneficiaries via income tax cuts that were extracted from everyone else. From 1985 and forward, the added payroll receipts from working people's earnings got helpfully diverted to the general revenues account, where it became a slush fund to cushion perrenial deficit budgets. The original intent to dedicate the tax hike to build up the SS trust fund for workers' retirement was set aside.
Similarly, the Bush tax cuts were covered in large part by an inflation-boosted tax that extends the AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax) every year to reach lower and lower income threshold households. These inflation-instigated AMT sweeps, which began to net families who had large numbers of children or with moderate incomes and high local taxes, disallowed normal deductions and morphed into an "Any Man's Tax" surtax. For Bush's Treasury Dept. to allow removing this higher tax net would have deprived them of funds ($100s of billions over a decade) they wanted to tap to finance the planned tax rate cuts. When the choice in 2001 was slashing tax rates at the top or fixing the AMT trap ensnaring ordinary taxpayers, you know which one won out. Treasury and Congress opted for a small partial "patch" to the AMT but kept most of it intact. (In fact, the lowered rates actually moved more folks to the AMT shadow surtax system.)
Senator Charles Grassley understood the tradeoff, March 8, 2001:
“Roughly one in seven taxpayers will come under the shadow of the Alternative Minimum Tax by the end of the decade… That figure will significantly be higher if President Bush’s tax plan is adopted, and that is according to the Joint Tax Committee of the Congress.”
Senator Charles Grassley, February 28, 2001:
“In addition, President Bush’s plan [will] bring millions more Americans into the AMT process; the Joint Tax Committee estimates that the Bush tax plan will nearly double the number of American taxpayers affected by the AMT.”
Then-Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, February 13, 2001:
“The Treasury Department estimates that the Administration’s tax cut proposals would (1) increase tax receipts from the AMT by $262 billion over the 2002-2011 period, and (2) increase the number of taxpayers in 2011 who have additional tax liability because of the AMT from 20.4 million to 34.7 million.”
The same tradeoffs were made in the 2003 round of tax cutting, with the AMT being an offset, in part, to trillion dollar tax cuts that were not financed. On net, the Bush tax rate cuts put the U.S. $2 trillion in hock. That's a lot less revenue.
Supply siders, take note.
"Less" has not become more — except more debt.