WH Says Deal Includes Tax Hikes

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White House senior adviser David Plouffe said on Monday that he believes the newly minted deal to raise the U.S. debt ceiling will pass both houses of Congress and be signed into law by President Barack Obama.

Plouffe also appeared to clash with House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, who said on Sunday that the deal included no tax hikes.

"That's just not true," he told NBC's Today show. "If we're going to do additional deficit-reduction in the fall, it should be tax reform, closing loopholes for the wealthy and big corporations." Read more at Reuters.com.

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…There will be tax increases. The Deficit Commission will have at least one weak kneed Republican and the commission will only be as strong as its weakest link. The Bush tax cuts will also absolutely expire and not be renewed.

The alternative for the GOP would be seeing massive defense cuts and being blamed for senior citizens seeing their Medicare cut. “But,” House Republican leaders exclaim, “the cuts would not be to beneficiaries.”

True, the cuts would be punishing doctors who will respond by denying access to Medicare patients.

The Democrats are happy to force through taxes in the committee and then, when the GOP opposes them, claim the GOP would rather hurt our soldiers and seniors than raise taxes on “fat cat millionaires.” Read more at RedState.com.

Portion of Transcript:

LAUER: The president clearly wanted more revenues. He wanted to raise taxes on wealthiest Americans. He wanted to get rid of some tax cuts for corporations. Those are not in there. Is the fight over taxes over? And did the president lose it?

PLOUFFE: Absolutely not. This congressional committee is going to look at tax reform, entitlement reform. So this first stage of deficit reduction is deficit cuts, largely identified by a process the president and the vice president led. And are point was things like Social Security, cuts to Medicare beneficiaries, Medicaid, we did not think those should be part of the deficit reduction package without tax reform. So none of those things are in this initial package, and that's what the debate in the fall is going to be about.

LAUER: But Speaker Boehner has said that in his opinion raising taxes in the second phase of this plan is nearly impossible. Would you agree with that?

PLOUFFE: No, that's just not true. And obviously, in our discussions with Speaker Boehner, he had tentatively agreed to raise at least $800 billion in revenue. You see a lot of Republican Senators, business leaders throughout the country saying we need a balanced package. So that's the case the president is going to make, that if we're going to do additional deficit reduction in the fall it should be tax reform, closing loopholes for the wealthy and big corporations.