The House called off a vote Thursday evening on House Speaker John A. Boehner’s plan to extend tax cuts on income up to $1 million — known as Plan B — because he could not muster enough votes from fellow Republicans to pass the measure.
“Now it is up to the president to work with Senator Reid on legislation to avert the fiscal cliff,” a statement from Boehner’s office said. “The House has already passed legislation to stop all of the January 1 tax rate increases and replace the sequester with responsible spending cuts that will begin to address our nation’s crippling debt. The Senate must now act.”
The move leaves unclear the next step in the negotiations over the fiscal cliff set to hit the country’s economy on the first of the new year. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said the House has adjourned until after Christmas.
The scheduled vote on the plan had been abruptly delayed earlier Thursday evening. Instead, top House Republicans convened a meeting in Boehner’s office, located just off the Rotunda, where the general public and lawmakers continue paying their respects to the late Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii).
That meeting ended around 8 p.m., with Boehner’s office reporting that the House did not take up the measure “because it did not have sufficient support from our members to pass.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) had pledged that the Democratic-controlled chamber would not vote on Plan B even if Boehner could muster the Republican votes necessary to send the measure to the Senate.
Illustrating Boehner’s difficulties, the conservative Club for Growth not only reiterated its opposition to his plan to raise taxes on people earning more than $1 million a year, but urged lawmakers to reject a separate Republican bill that would partially avert a series of spending cuts set to take effect in January.
Boehner argued Thursday afternoon that Plan B would shield more than 99 percent of Americans from a tax hike scheduled to be implemented without congressional action next month along with the huge spending cuts.
“When the Senate Democrats and the White House refuse to act, they will be responsible for the largest tax increase in American history,” he said.
Competing press events by Boehner and Senate leaders Thursday did nothing to resolve the stand-off over the year-end “fiscal cliff.”
Democrats said Boehner was forced to move on his GOP-only plan after discovering he did not have Republican support for a broader deficit-reduction plan he had proposed to the White House.
Boehner charged that President Obama has not put forward enough in spending cuts and proposals to change entitlements to match Boehner’s own concession — offered to the White House on Friday — to allow some tax rates to rise. Republicans have maintained for years that tax cuts enacted under the George W. Bush administration should be extended at all income levels. Obama and fellow Democrats have insisted that the cuts be allowed to expire for the wealthiest Americans.
House GOP calls off vote on Boehner’s ‘Plan B’
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House GOP calls off vote on Boehner’s ‘Plan B’
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