Before the election, Republicans privately believed Obama would cave in a budget deal to avoid risking the fiscal cliff, yet after the last week, they see it as a possibility.
‘Contrived Cliff’
“The president has decided, I am convinced, that he wants to just go over this contrived cliff because that’s exactly what he’s wanted,” Senator Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican, said in an interview. “He wants more tax revenue, and he wants to cut the military. So that’s what’s going to happen.”
Republican opposition to a $1.6 trillion in tax increases over a decade, $50 billion in stimulus spending, home mortgage refinancing and Obama’s plan to end direct congressional control over raising the debt ceiling should be taken in context, said Patrick Griffin, former legislative affairs director under President Bill Clinton.
“You’ve got to open with something,” Griffin, who is associate director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University in Washington. “And they’re still talking.”