So Reid and McConnell are working on a plan. Reid specifically is asking McConnell specifically to propose good faith additions to the democrat plan. In other words, McConnell gets what he wants. Probably this means that the cutoff goes up to $400,000 rather than the $250,000 in the original senate bill. This isn't a lot different from what the expected result of the Plan B would have been. Once the house passed it (hypothetically) the senate would lower it and it would end up somewhere in $400,000 to $600,000 range.
And that is a problem. Obama's proposal to increase the cutoff to $400,000 in his latest offer was based on the assumption that a lot of deductions would go away. This is a nice fat tax break for people who don't need it simply because the guys on our side seem to be unwilling to call the republicans bluff on an issue they have zero leverage on.
I'm very concerned that after starting with a non-negotiable platform we won the election on we are conceding this for nothing at all. Democratic demands are once again shown to be hollow low-ball negotiation offers that will be whittled down. This expectation gives no incentive for other democrats to stand firm in their demands at all. The republicans are by nature a more ideologically unified party but you would expect a party holding the presidency to be able to show unity. George Bush took the house democrats to the cleaners over iraq war funding and forced pelosi to pass appropriations with republican votes.
Obama's comments such as "I realize I'm not going to get everything I want" and "everyone has to give a little" are mystifying to me. He is the President of the United States and he is announcing to the world that his demands are low-ball offers??????