Fiscal cliff: Why is the White House helping Republicans?

A new report by the White House's Council of Economic Advisers scares the middle class about the effects of the fiscal cliff, Reich writes.

By Robert Reich,?Guest blogger / November 26, 2012

In this November file photo, President Barack Obama acknowledges House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio while speaking to reporters in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington. A new report by the White House?s Council of Economic Advisers plays into Republican hands by scaring the middle class, Reich writes.

Carolyn Kaster/AP/File

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Why is the White House trying to scare average people about the consequences of the ?fiscal cliff??

Skip to next paragraph Robert Reich

Robert is chancellor?s professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Clinton. Time Magazine?named him one of the 10 most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written 13 books, including ?The Work of Nations,? his latest best-seller ?Aftershock: The Next Economy and America?s Future," and a new?e-book, ?Beyond Outrage.??He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause.

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If the President?s strategy is to hold his ground and demand from Republicans tax increases on the wealthy, presumably his strongest bargaining position would be to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire on schedule come January ? causing taxes to rise automatically, especially on the wealthy.

So you?d think part of that strategy would be reassure the rest of the public that the fiscal cliff isn?t so bad or so steep, and that at the start of January Democrats will introduce in Congress a middle-class tax cut whose effect is to prevent taxes from rising for most people (thereby forcing Republicans to vote for a tax cut for the middle class or hold it hostage to a tax cut for the wealthy as well).

But today (Monday) the White House?s Council of Economic Advisers issued a?report?today warning that if Congress allows the Bush tax cuts to expire January 1and the Alternative Minimum Tax to kick in, the middle class will face sharply-rising taxes.?

The result, says the Council of Economic Advisers, could slow consumer spending by 1.7 percent next year, and slow overall economic growth by 1.4 percent. The loss of $200 billion in consumer spending is just about what American families spent on all the new cars and trucks sold in the U.S. in the last year, according to the report. About $36 billion less would be spent for housing and utilities, $32 billion less for healthcare, and $26 billion less for groceries and at restaurants.

This kind of fear-mongering plays into Republican hands.

The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. This post originally ran on www.robertreich.org.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/8ESHbrL5Hgc/Fiscal-cliff-Why-is-the-White-House-helping-Republicans

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