Morning Joe Charts: Fiscal Cliff
November 15, 2012 On today’s Morning Joe, Steven Rattner breaks down the components of the fiscal cliff and discusses its potential impact on the deficit and GDP.

Fiscal cliff from rattnerfamily

Morning Joe Charts: Fiscal Cliff – Steve Rattner 
by gradycarter So now that the election is over and we’ve had a little time to digest what has happened we need to face it, the election it’s self didn’t solve our problems. So, it’s time to get back to talking about what we’re facing as a nation. The biggest problem that we face currently in the short term is the Fiscal Cliff, and it is really going to take some grownups to work this out. 

These charts break down the different sides of what would or wouldn’t happen if we were to allowed to go over the “fiscal cliff”, but the chart at the end is the best at summarizing what action/inaction would actually mean for the country in general terms.

This chart is the more long term version of what Mr. Rattner and projects from the CBO’s (Congressional Budget Office) reporting on the fiscal cliff.Here is a quick video explaining what we can expect with facing the “fiscal cliff”.

John McCain ‘troubled’ by Susan Rice’s Benghazi explanation at meeting



By SCOTT WONG | 11/27/12 11:55 AM EST Updated: 11/27/12 1:15 PM EST

Sen. John McCain and two other GOP senators said they were “significantly troubled” after a private meeting with U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice about her erroneous explanation of the deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

And the senators left open the possibility they could try to block Rice’s promotion if President Barack Obama nominates her as secretary of State. Acting CIA Director Michael Morell also joined Rice at the meeting. Continue Reading

Graham: 'More disturbed' 

Ayotte: 'More troubled' after meeting with Rice

“The concerns I have are greater today than they were before, and we’re not even close to getting the basic answers,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), joined by McCain and Sen. Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), told reporters after the closed-door meeting. “I would place a hold on anybody who wanted to be promoted for any job who had a role in the Benghazi situation.” Rice came under fire from Republicans after she took to five Sunday morning talk shows on Sept. 16 and incorrectly described the attack as the result of a spontaneous demonstration spurred by an anti-Islam Internet video. In fact, the Sept. 11 assault that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans was determined to be a premeditated terrorist attack. 

Rice issued a statement later Tuesday after the meeting with Republicans and subsequent negative news coverage.

“Neither I nor anyone else in the administration intended to mislead the American people at any stage in this process, and the administration updated Congress and the American people as our assessments evolved,” Rice said.

Rice, the frontrunner to replace Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has stated she was simply following administration talking points that had been approved by the intelligence community. The GOP trio, who all serve on the Armed Services Committee, have said the Obama administration was trying to mislead the public about the terrorist attack because it would look bad before the election.

McCain and Graham appeared to temper their criticism of Rice over the weekend, but the hour-and-a-half long meeting Tuesday only seemed to reignite their fury.

“We are significantly troubled by many of the answers that we got and some that we didn’t get,” said McCain, an Arizona Republican. “It is clear the information that [Rice] gave the American people was incorrect when she said it was a spontaneous demonstration triggered by a hateful video. It was not, and there was compelling evidence at the time that that was certainly not the case.”

Graham was more blunt, saying Rice’s explanation included “bad information.”

“If you don’t know what happened, just say you don’t know what happened,” he said. “The American people got bad information on 16 September. They got bad information from President Obama, and the question is should they have been giving the information at all?”

Ayotte vowed to hold up an Ayotte nomination until the administration provides clearer answers.

“Absolutely, there will be a hold,” Ayotte told reporters Tuesday afternoon after her meeting with Rice.

Ayotte, a Republican member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said she still wants to know why Rice referenced an unclassified report, when she had also seen a classified briefing that said individuals linked to al Qaeda were involved in the Sept. 11 attack.

“There’s a judgment issue about why would you go on every Sunday show and leave a different impression, and I think that is a judgment issue that is a fair issue of inquiry,” the New Hampshire senator added. “My view is that we should hold on this until we get information, sufficient information, produced by the administration because these are questions that need to be answered. Let’s not forget secretary of state has a significant piece in this. It’s not insignificant. It’s not unrelated.”

Stephanie Gaskell contributed to this report.Latest on POLITICO 
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Arafat's body exhumed, reburied 

Investigators prepare to exhume Yasser Arafat in murder inquiry


Investigators have begun to exhume the body of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in an attempt to determine whether he was assassinated by lethal doses of radioactive poison. NBC's John Ray reports.

By NBC News' Kari Huus and wire services

Did the late Palestinian leader die of poisoning? This is the nagging question that French investigators hope to answer by exhuming the remains of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on Tuesday, eight years after his death in a Paris hospital at the age of 75.

French judges in charge of the investigation arrived on Sunday evening in the West Bank city of Ramallah, the site of Arafat's mausoleum, in a murder investigation that was opened in August, the French news agency AFP reported.

Rumors of foul play have long surrounded the sudden demise of Arafat, a champion of Palestinian statehood from the time he was 19, and eventually, the democratically-elected president of the Palestinian Authority.

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Arafat was revered by many Palestinians and Arabs as a freedom fighter, and reviled by many Israelis and its allies as a terrorist for his relentless fight for Palestinian self-determination. But he also had enemies and rivals within the Arab and Palestinian political circles.

The rapid deterioration of his health and death baffled doctors who were trying to treat him in France, and an autopsy was never performed at the request of his widow, Suha.

Many Palestinians believe Arafat was poisoned at the behest of Israel — an idea that Israel has rejected.

But poisoning as a cause of death gained currency after a Swiss institute said it had found high levels of radioactive polonium on Arafat’s clothing, which was supplied by Suha, prompting the French to open a formal murder inquiry.

Polonium was the substance that killed Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006. Litvenenko was a Russian ex-spy who later became a relentless critic of the Kremlin.

"It is a painful necessity" to exhume the body of Arafat, said Tawfiq al-Tirawi, who is in charge of the Palestinian committee overseeing the investigation, speaking to reporters in Ramallah on Saturday.

Slideshow: Arafat's journey

Tirawi said the Palestinians had "evidence which suggests Arafat was assassinated by Israelis," Reuters reported.

Tirawi said separate samples will be taken from the remains by the French and Swiss forensic teams, as well as a Russian team of experts invited by the Palestinians, and that results could take up to several months to be announced. Arafat’s body would be reburied in a military ceremony, he said.

Not everyone agrees that exhuming the late leader serves a purpose because even if it shows that he was poisoned — which may be hard to establish this long after his death — it won’t reveal who poisoned him.

The exhumation and renewed allegations of Israeli involvement could stir further tension between the Palestinians and Israelis, who are observing a truce after a week of fierce fighting in Gaza.

An editorial in the Jerusalem Post on Monday lambasted the process.

"Can we really rely on an impartial forensic investigation now? Too much political capital appears to have been invested in this affair to instill much confidence that everything will be strictly on the up and up. This, moreover, is without even going into the issue of whether all evidentiary material is in fact untainted."

Another critic of the exhumation — for entirely different reasons — is Arafat’s nephew Nasser al-Qidwa, who compared the process to "desecration," the AFP reported.

"No good can come out of this at all," Qidwa told the agency. "It does no good to the Palestinians."

Rice meeting with senators fails to dampen criticism

By Tabassum Zakaria | Reuters – 58 mins ago
Reuters/REUTERS - U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice speaks with the media after Security Council consultations at the U.N. headquarters in New York, in this June 7, 2012 file photo. Rice has …more 


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice on Tuesday failed to win over her harshest Republican critics in the U.S. Senate who are threatening to block her nomination if President Barack Obama chooses her for Secretary of State or another top post in his second-term Cabinet.

Rice met for about an hour behind closed doors at the U.S. Capitol with Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte. They have openly criticized her for initial comments after the September 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi that suggested it was a spontaneous event arising from protests of an anti-Islam film rather than a preplanned terrorist strike.

The U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were killed in the attack on the Benghazi mission and a nearby CIA annex. Intelligence officials later said the attack was possibly tied to al Qaeda affiliates.

"We are significantly troubled by many of the answers that we got, and some that we didn't get, concerning evidence that was overwhelming leading up to the attack on our consulate," McCain told reporters after the meeting.

"It is clear that the information that she gave the American people was incorrect when she said that it was a spontaneous demonstration triggered by a hateful video," he said.

"It was not, and there was compelling evidence at the time that that was certainly not the case, including statements by Libyans as well as other Americans who are fully aware that people don't bring mortars and rocket-propelled grenades to spontaneous demonstrations," McCain said.

Rice was accompanied by a CIA official and was not seen by reporters.

President Barack Obama has defended Rice and said if senators had a problem with her comments on a round of Sunday television talk shows days after the attack, they should go to him.

(Reporting by Tabassum Zakaria; Editing by Jackie Frank)

Plain English: The Fiscal Cliff Explained

By Tim Parker | Investopedia – Wed, Nov 21, 2012 10:41 AM EST

There's no escaping it. The fiscal cliff is everywhere. From water coolers at the workplace to the mainstream media, everyone is talking about it. However, like most conversations that involve Washington, important facts are often missing. Let us look beyond the noisy details of Capital Hill press conferences and social media opinions. Instead, let's view the fiscal cliff through the lens of simple fact. What is the fiscal cliff and how will it affect your life?

Who Coined the Term?
Who actually first uttered the words "fiscal cliff" is not clear. Some believe that it was first used by Goldman Sachs economist, Alec Phillips. Others credit Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke for taking the phrase mainstream in his remarks in front of Congress. Others credit Safir Ahmed, a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, who in 1989 wrote a story detailing the state's education funding and used the term "fiscal cliff."

What Is the Fiscal Cliff?
The fiscal cliff refers to a number of tax hikes and spending cuts that will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2013. If Congress and President Obama do not act to avert this perfect storm of legislative changes, America will, in the media's terms, "fall over the cliff." Among other things, it will mean a tax increase the size of which has not been seen by Americans in 60 years.

How Big Are We Talking?
The Tax Policy Center reports that middle-income families will pay an average of $2,000 more in taxes in 2013. Many itemized deductions will be subject to phase-out, and popular tax credits like the earned income credit, child tax credit, and American opportunity credits will be reduced. 401(k) and other retirement accounts will be subject to higher taxes.

In addition, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that 3.4 million or more people will lose their jobs. This will result from a combination of a slowing economy and reduced government spending. Many people disagree about the details, but virtually everybody agrees that all Americans will feel the effects of the fiscal cliff.

What Are the Bush Era Tax Cuts?
At the heart of the fiscal cliff are the Bush Era Tax cuts passed by Congress under President George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003. These include a lower tax rate and a reduction in dividend and capital gains taxes as the largest components. These are set to expire at the end of 2012 and represent the largest part of the fiscal cliff.

Is There a Bright Side to This?
Yes. According to the Congressional Budget Office, by 2022, the budget deficit would fall to $200 billion from its current level of $1.1 trillion. That would all be welcome news, but in order to get there, the nation would face almost certain financial turmoil.

How Do We Fix It?
Recently, lawmakers met at the White House over this issue. Both sides called the meeting productive, but neither side indicated that a deal was imminent. Democrats want to see more revenue (tax increases), especially from the nation's wealthy, as part of any deal. Republicans favor more spending cuts, especially to entitlements like Medicare. While both sides subscribe to different philosophies concerning taxation, each have indicated that they are willing to compromise on many of the more critical issues leading to Jan. 1.

Cliff or no cliff, deal or no deal, Americans will almost certainly pay more taxes, according to CNBC. It is just a matter of how much more. Therefore, any compromise will probably include tax increases, just not to the magnitude of those mandated by the fiscal cliff.

Will Fixing the Fiscal Cliff Solve the Economy's Current Woes?
Not at all. The Bush Era tax cuts and other stimulus measures have propped up the economy, as it continues to recover from the 2008 recession. Some investors believe that much of the most recent stock market decline has to do with the looming fiscal cliff. They believe that once a deal is announced, and economic uncertainty is removed, then the market may recover to near its recent highs. Others believe that if the deal includes another one-year extension (or something similar to the debt ceiling negotiations), investors will not be impressed.

The Bottom Line
When will a deal come? Nobody knows, but both sides of the aisle are admitting that fighting and bickering is not the answer. A more conciliatory political environment will give both parties a better chance at gaining control of Washington in 2016. Ultimately, when the deal comes, it will almost certainly result in some combination of tax rate increases and spending cuts. The willingness of both sides to compromise is crucial to any final agreement.