Jay Rockefeller is circulating a letter that calls on the president to stand firm. Liberals to Obama: 'Don't buckle'

Liberal Democrats in the Senate are warning President Barack Obama not to cave on taxes and entitlements in deficit talks set to begin this week, a move that could complicate efforts by the White House to win the backing of GOP leaders.

West Virginia’s Jay Rockefeller and Tom Harkin of Iowa are circulating a letter among their Democratic colleagues that calls on the president to stand firm on revenue, entitlement programs and spending cuts. They’re hoping to get as many as 30 Senate Democrats to sign on, Rockefeller said.


The letter, which was obtained by POLITICO, is dramatic in its policy prescriptions to avert the fiscal cliff.

For one, it says the president should insist on $1 in revenue for each $1 in spending cuts. It also says that the $917 billion in spending cuts enacted under last year’s agreement to increase the debt ceiling should be counted toward the next round of deficit reduction.

“These cuts are real, and have an effect on everything from housing to education,” according to the letter. “To ignore the significance of these cuts — by not counting them — further threatens programs that benefit working families.”

The wide-ranging letter also demands that defense cuts be kept in place, says the Bush-era tax cuts for the top income brackets should expire at the end of the year and argues that benefit cuts to entitlement programs should be rejected.

In an interview with POLITICO, Rockefeller described the message he’s trying to transmit to the White House: “Don’t buckle.”

The effort demonstrates the complicated calculus facing Obama as he prepares to meet with congressional leaders on Friday.

On the one hand, Obama must deal with Democrats like Rockefeller who say the $1.6 trillion in new revenue that the White House is seeking “probably isn’t good enough” — even though it’s double what the administration sought last year.

Meanwhile, the president has to negotiate with Republicans, like House Speaker John Boehner, who feel like they’re already making concessions by agreeing to some revenue that would be achieved through unspecified loophole closures.

In a news conference on Wednesday, Obama seemed to be trying to appease both sides. He said he’s open to compromise while also dismissing GOP efforts to count revenue that results from economic growth — known in tax parlance as dynamic scoring — toward deficit reduction.

“Compromise is hard,” Obama said. “But what I will not do is to have a process that is vague, that says we’re going to sort of, kind of, raise revenue through dynamic scoring or closing loopholes that have not been identified.”

The letter echoes the president on the revenue front.

“Any deal must include significant revenues,” it says. “These revenues must be real and not inflated by ‘fuzzy math’ like dynamic scoring. Any deal should end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of the population and close tax loopholes benefiting wealthy Americans and corporations. Furthermore, any deal must include a one-to-one ration of revenues to spending cuts.”

On entitlements, the letter calls for the president to guard against “harmful cuts.”

“We urge you to reject changes to Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security that would cut benefits, shift costs to states, alter the structure of these critical programs or force vulnerable populations to bear the burden of deficit-reduction efforts,” the letter says. “Each of these programs is a vital lifeline to the middle class.”

The lawmakers have good reason to raise concerns about how the president might resolve the fiscal cliff of tax increases and spending cuts slated to strike at the end of the year. During last year’s negotiations over the debt ceiling, the administration considered changing the way inflation was calculated for Social Security in a way that would have reduced future benefit payments.

And it was just two years ago that Obama outraged liberals by signing a deal with congressional Republicans that extended all of the Bush-era tax cuts for two years.

Obama assured them on Wednesday that he wouldn’t sign that kind of law again.

“What I said at the time is what I meant, which is this was a one-time proposition,” Obama said during the news conference.

John Bresnahan contributed to this report.

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 7:01 p.m. on November 14, 2012.