After the not-so-surprising failure of the so-called "super-committee", the Republicans are celebrating what they think is a huge political victory.
What the Republicans fail to realize is that there are not one but two triggers that would bite the Republicans if nothing is done to prevent those triggers from going into effect. The two triggers I am speaking of are the $1.2 trillion of automatic spending cuts that would automatically go into effect on January 1, 2013, and the $3.8 trillion trigger that would automatically repeal the Bush tax cuts, which mostly benefit the wealthiest Americans, on January 1, 2013.
The GOP would need help from Democrats in order to keep one or both triggers from going into effect. The GOP would either have to work with Senate Democrats and President Obama to work out a plan that would prevent the triggers from going into effect, or win over enough Democrats in the House and Senate to override the President's veto.
While the $1.2 trillion spending cut trigger is included in the same bill that authorized the failure of that so-called "super-committee", which was passed as a last-minute measure to prevent our government from defaulting on its national debt earlier this year, the trigger that would automatically repeal the Bush tax cuts was part of the first of two reconciliation bills that authorized the Bush tax cuts in the first place back in 2001. The trigger that would repeal the Bush tax cuts was supposed to go into effect on January 1, 2011, but a last-minute bill that was signed into law by President Obama delayed the Bush tax cuts repeal trigger from going into effect for two years.
The tables have been turned on the Republicans! The only thing the Democrats need to do to score perhaps the biggest political victory in party history is to simply do nothing! The Republicans have been blindsided by their own ignorance, and could pay dearly for it. All President Obama and the Democrats need to do is simply hold the line.