Scott Lilly: House Republicans still haven’t learned lessons from their 1995 government shutdown

  House Republicans have been contemplating their next move in the fiscal showdown this week as they huddle during their annual retreat in Williamsburg, Virginia. There is a real sense of Armageddon in the air. President Obama took them on directly with respect to the central issue on their agenda, preserving low tax rates for high income individuals, and won—not by a little but by a lot.

Cameron Smith: GOP support for fiscal cliff tax bill: Tactical or terrible?

  Over the last few years, Washington politicians created a “crisis” where a combination of tax hikes, spending cuts, and reaching the federal debt limit stood to send a hobbled American economy back into a recession.

  Instead of comprehensively dealing with the problems in a timely fashion, legislators waited until mere weeks before beginning serious negotiations to avoid falling off the “fiscal cliff.”

Seth Hanlon: Congress should close the carried interest loophole

  In recent days Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) have both suggested that they might be willing to allow some tax cuts for high-income individuals to expire. But Sen. McConnell—and evidently Rep. Boehner, as well—are reportedly still insisting that the Bush tax cuts on investment income be extended.

  The Republican leaders’ willingness to discuss top tax rates is a welcome step forward. But until policymakers address the gap between tax rates on ordinary income (income from wages, salaries, and so on) and the tax rates on investment income (capital gains and dividends), they will not have fully addressed the fundamental unfairness in the tax code.

Ian M. MacIsaac: Freeze, this is a stickup: hostage negotiations in the fiscal cliff crisis

  "We're nowhere."

  That was House Speaker John Boehner's summation of the fiscal cliff negotiations as of this time last week, in an interview on Fox News Sunday.

  Boehner said that plan proposed by President Obama and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to avoid the fiscal cliff, which included an end to Congress's control of the debt ceiling limit along with $1.6 trillion in new revenue, was "a non-serious proposal;" particularly because, as Boehner portrayed it, the proposal contained federal spending that outweighed its proposed budget cuts.

Cameron Smith: The Free-fall and the fiscal cliff

  As the automatic tax increases and spending cuts of the so-called “fiscal cliff” near the horizon, political pundits continue to argue whether the government should solve its budget woes by reducing spending, raising taxes, or some combination of the two. Even the President has engaged with the trendy narrative of taking a “little more” from “wealthy” Americans to repair the budget.

  Unfortunately, the reality of America’s fiscal situation has little connection to popular political opinion. Washington’s problem is excessive spending. Period.