Fiscal Cliff Deal

Politico has the story about the dealing that went on, The fiscal cliff deal that almost wasn't. I've got less respect for Boehner. Also it seems to confirm that while the Republicans want spending cuts, they never proposed any. Their problem is that the representatives want to cut entitlements but their constituents don't really want to. So they want the Democrats to propose the cuts they're willing to live with and take the political heat. So far they've been smart enough to avoid that.

Everything is Terrible is a funnier and more complete telling of the history of all this stuff going all the way back to the word "lockbox".

Here's the history of the negotiations in one chart:



WonkBook has Everything you need to know about the fiscal cliff deal, but you can get away with Your fiscal cliff deal cheat sheet explains it all in terms anyone can understand. The New York TImes has a graphic showing how everyone in the House voted.

Tuesday’s tax increase is the biggest in decades has a number of charts making the point. It was posted New Year's Eve so it doesn't include the final deal, but this chart says a lot:



Also Who would foot the higher 2013 tax bill, in one chart

Ed Kilgore explains The Deal and the Working Poor and Suzy Khimm says Make between $200,000 and $500,000? Congrats, you got the best ‘fiscal cliff’ deal!

You might hear two numbers for what this deal costs. The fiscal cliff deal’s price tag: -$3.9 trillion or +$600 billion depending on whether you compare to before or after we went over the cliff. Remember, going over the cliff was going to set in austerity, it would cut the deficit $4.5 trillion over 10 years. So this deal is either +$0.6T or -$3.9T.

And of course, there was pork, 8 Huge Corporate Handouts in the Fiscal Cliff Bill. They are: $43 million over 2 years for NASCAR, $165 million/year for railroads, $150 million/year for Hollywood, tax incentives for mining companies to train miners in safety, subsidies for Goldman Sachs Headquarters, $9 billion off-shore financing loophole for banks, extension to allow US multinationals to not pay taxes on income earned by companies they own abroad, and bonus depreciation and R&D tax credits worth $120 billion. Brad Plumer repeats some of these in listing the 10 weirdest parts of the ‘fiscal cliff’ bill. And also, The fiscal cliff deal cuts $1.9 billion from Obamacare.

Ezra Klein sums up The lessons of the fiscal cliff. "The White House didn’t hold firm on their promise to let the Bush tax cuts expire for all income over $250,000. They agreed to a $450,000 threshold instead. But at the same time, they pocketed more than $600 billion in revenue, $30 billion in extended unemployment benefits and five years of stimulus tax credits without giving up any real spending cuts." He then goes on to predict how the next set of negotiations will go.