Tax issues stall deficit committee as deadline nears

By Lisa Mascaro, LA Times

Deadlock. Impasse. Cooling-off period.

Call it what you will, but the congressional super committee on deficit reduction has again stalled out after a flurry of proposals this week from Republican and Democratic members as the Thanksgiving deadline approaches.

Talks continue behind closed doors as smaller groups of lawmakers from the largely secretive 12-member panel try to strike a deal to reduce deficits by $1.5 trillion over the next decade.

But the stalemate revolves around the issues that have stunted such efforts all year: Republicans are unwilling to agree to the scale of new revenues Democrats insist are needed to get their agreement to cut Medicare and other domestic spending and entitlement programs.

Talks hit a “breakthrough,” as Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, called it this week when the GOP strayed from its rigid anti-tax stance and offered new tax revenue for the first time.

But Democrats rejected the GOP proposal as paltry because the new taxes were paired with a permanent lowering of income tax rates on wealthy Americans and other households.

To read more, visit:  http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-supercom-stall-taxes-20111110,0,40357.story?track=rss

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