Andy Kroll

When House Speaker John Boehner's office released an outline of the final debt deal he hashed out with President Obama, one message was clear: This plan would not raise taxes.

In the near term, Boehner was right. The Budget Control Act, as the debt ceiling deal is officially known, contains no outright tax increases and does not eliminate any tax loopholes or corporate subsidies, including $4 billion a year for large oil corporations. But Boehner and other Republicans say the debt ceiling bill goes even further: They claim it's "effectively...impossible" for the "supercommittee" of 12 lawmakers tasked with cutting the deficit by $1.5 trillion more to raise taxes at all, tipping further deficit reduction even more to-the-bone spending cuts.

But Jim Horney, an economist at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities who analyzed the bill, has a message for Boehner: You're wrong.

Horney's argument gets pretty far into the fiscal policy weeds, but here's the gist. For starters, eliminating those oil company subsidies and tax perks for corporate jets is a quick and easy way for the government to bring in more money and, as Horney points out, doing so "is clearly allowed under the proposed agreement."

Next, to gauge how much you've trimmed the federal deficit, you've got to have a baseline from which to start. The GOP claims the debt ceiling bill's supercommittee uses what's called a "current-law" baseline; in plain English, a starting point in which the status quo reigns, in which laws governing Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and taxes remain untouched.

This matters because it puts Democrats seriously behind the 8-ball in demanding new revenues from the deficit supercommittee. Take the Bush tax cuts. The way the GOP sees it, their expiration at the end of 2012 would not be considered new revenue; after all, that's what the law already says. Why is this important? Because in the search for new revenue, under the GOP's rules, supercommittee members would be fighting an uphill battle to enact more tax increases on top of the Bush tax cuts' expiration. In short, it becomes really, really hard for Democrats to demand a balanced proposal out of the supercommittee, setting us up another lopsided round of cuts. And that's why, in the GOP's words, a current-law baseline "effectively mak[es] it impossible for [the] Joint Committee to increase taxes."

Wrong again, Horney argues. Nothing in the debt ceiling bill, he says, requires using a current-law baseline to measure deficit reduction and so blocking future revenue from tax increases. If the supercommittee's members want to use a different starting point, one that takes into the account the deficit-cutting effects of tax reforms, they're free to do so. "It is not the terms of the new agreement," Horney writes, "but rather the opposition of Speaker Boehner (who has promised to appoint to the Joint Committee only members who will refuse to consider any revenue increases) and other Republican leaders, that threatens to prevent the Joint Committee from considering a balanced approach to deficit reduction." And with the short-term mandates of the Budget Control Act centered entirely on spending cuts, the supercommittee is the only remaining opportunity for lawmakers to squeeze some balance into the deal.

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It's not only right-wing political groups, like the cash-flush, Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity that are deploying resources to help Republican state senators in Wisconsin prevail in their upcoming recall elections. The evangelical right is lending its muscle to the GOP to protect the six Republican lawmakers against their Democratic challengers.

As Washington Post's Greg Sargent reports, various pro-life and anti-gay rights groups are throwing cash and manpower at the Wisconsin recalls to prevent Democrats from seizing control of the state senate. (Democrats must net three seats this summer to gain the majority.) These aren't middling organizations, either: Ralph Reed's Faith and Freedom Coalition (FFC), a national evangelical group, is deploying volunteers to the Badger State to support the besieged Republican senators. From a July 20 FFC blog post:

The Wisconsin Faith & Freedom Coalition will work to get out the vote the old fashion way, by talking with Wisconsin voters through burning up the shoe leather in door-to-door canvassing across key neighborhoods in senate districts from Milwaukee to Madison. Then, before Election Day on August 9th, we will initiate a full-scale get-out-the-vote phone bank operation to make sure every last pro-freedom and pro-family voter goes to vote on behalf of our values.

Wisconsin Faith & Freedom Chairman, Tony Nasvik, has worked to organize this effort and has said, “General Patton’s rapid advance across the deserts of North Africa or the open fields of Eastern France were not possible without reinforcements. The recall spectacle in Wisconsin is nearing its conclusion in this all-out battle for the State Senate. This recall has been a pitched fight between the public (and in some cases private) unions from all over the country, while most of the ground campaign on the conservative side has been locally supported."

Here's more on the right-wing mobilization from Sargent:

Susan Armacost, the legislative director for Wisconsin Right to Life, tells me that the group is involved in the recall wars because Planned Parenthood is active, too—and said that keeping the state senate in GOP hands would be better for the anti-abortion cause.

That’s because anti-abortion forces in Wisconsin are pushing the state to opt out of Federally funded abortions as part of the exchanges set up under the Affordable Care Act. The group is also pushing a state-level measure that would more strictly regulate abortion.

National groups are involved, too. Here is a flyer—sent over by the labor-backed We Are Wisconsin—that’s being distributed by Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition, urging a vote against Fred Clark, the Dem recall challenger to vulnerable GOP state senator Luther Olsen:

The remaining recall elections in Wisconsin—targeting six GOP incumbents on August 9 and two Democratic incumbents a week later—are quickly shaping up to be a national political battle. Barring a recall of Republican Governor Scott Walker, they're the final chapter in this year's tempestuous battle over union rights in Wisconsin. Walker's budget bill may have prevailed, but Democrats could have the last word if they reclaim the senate and throw a wrench into Walker's future legislative plans.

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