Summary: Update December 20th, 11:30 p.m. ET: Speaker Boehner's "Plan B" tax bill died today, just hours after FreedomWorks sent Congress a letter and launched a national call to action opposing the bill.When folks in Washington thought FreedomWorks was for the bill, they assumed it would pass. When FreedomWorks came out against the bill, it failed. Below is the blog post that Speaker Boehner reportedly cited when trying to persuade his fellow House Republicans to support the plan. It seems that he and others in Congress assumed FreedomWorks supported the bill. A close reading, however, reveals that while I warmly praised Mr. Boehner's decision to walk away from the negotiations with President Obama, and described the Boehner Plan B bill in factual terms, I never endorsed the bill, nor did FreedomWorks. + + + Good news! Yesterday, House Speaker John Boehner announced he has pulled out of the bipartisan fiscal-cliff talks with President Obama and is moving toward the approach that FreedomWorks has been urging. The FreedomWorks Plan:Lock in the promised $1.2 trillion in ten-year sequester savings.Extend all current tax rates for one year (including the FICA payroll tax rate).Reform taxes and entitlements to avert another debt downgrade. Mr. Boehner's "Plan B" is to move a bill through the House that extends permanently (not just for a year) all current income-tax rates for everyone except those earning more than $1,000,000 a year. The bill includes some other tax provisions, listed below. Amendments are also likely to be made in order. [Note: It turned out no amendments were permitted, making it impossible for conservatives to improve the bill.] The votes could come as early as tomorrow [December 20]. While not nearly as good as the FreedomWorks Plan to avert the fiscal cliff, Plan B is much better than the so-called "balanced approach" that Mr. Boehner had, until Monday, been trying to negotiate with Mr. Obama. That deal would have: raised income tax rates for those in the two highest tax brackets; called off the promised sequester savings; cut Medicare benefits without real reform; and launched another round of wasteful and unnecessary stimulus spending. We need long-term spending reduction, but the Boehner-Obama plan as described in news reports would simply be another typical Washington "higher taxes today / lower spending someday, we promise" deal that wouldn't actually solve our long-term debt problem. Indeed, by cutting Medicare benefits without real reform, it would give the Left a convenient and powerful talking point in their efforts to stop real reform. Thank goodness that deal is off the table. Let's keep it off, by moving to Plan B -- and then amending Plan B into the FreedomWorks Plan. Plan B calls the Democrats' bluff. They've been loudly pressuring the Republican-controlled House to pass a bill to extend all current tax rates on households earning less than $250,000 a year. Yet now, with the Speaker publicly embracing their idea (although he would set the threshold at $1,000,000 a year instead of $250,000), the White House has issued a veto threat and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has blasted the bill as totally unaceptable. Apparently, the Democrats are willing to hold a middle-class tax cut hostage to their insistence on raising tax rates on people earning between $250,000 and $1,000,000 a year. The Plan B bill would prevent tax hikes for most income-tax payers in this weak economy. Let the Democrats explain their opposition to that. Given the Democrats' opposition, Plan B is unlikely to be signed into law. But in my opinion the House should consider it anyway (and, as I said, allow amendments, so we can turn it into the FreedomWorks plan). Details of the Bill According to an email we've received from the House Ways and Means Committee, the Plan B bill:Does not raise taxes. It is a net tax cut that prevents a $4.6 trillion [ten-year] tax hik
