Sperling: GOP counteroffer 'disappointing' and 'unfortunate'

By Bernie Becker - 12/04/12 12:43 PM ET

A top White House economic adviser on Tuesday blasted the recent GOP counteroffer on taxes as spending as “disappointing” and "unfortunate."

Gene Sperling, the director of the National Economic Council, said there was “no reason” that Republicans and Democrats couldn’t come together on a deal to avoid going over the so-called fiscal cliff.

But Sperling, speaking at an event hosted by the Campaign to Fix the Debt, also reiterated that President Obama would only sign a bill that allowed the tax rates currently paid by the highest earners to rise.

He said the Republican offer that Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) and other top House Republicans sent over on Tuesday missed the boat, both by calling for lowering tax rates on the wealthy and not clearly laying out that entitlement spending would be restrained.

“It not only failed to recognize the necessity of raising rates, it actually called for lowering rates for the highest earners, which inevitably means a worse deal for the middle class,” Sperling said. “This is very unfortunate, because recognition we must raise rates on the highest income Americans stands today as the critical key to unlocking the door to a bipartisan budget agreement.”

In their offer, the House Republicans included $800 billion in new revenues outside of any economic growth – something the GOP termed a significant concession. The Republican framework also called for some $900 billion in reductions to mandatory spending.

Republicans haveroundly dismissed last week’s offer from the administration, which called for $1.6 trillion in revenue and which Boehner said was from “la-la land.”

But Sperling’s comments on Tuesday suggest that the White House still believes it has the upper hand in negotiations, and a new Washington Post/Pew Research poll may give some credence to that notion. In his speech, Sperling did not specifically say whether the White House would accept a top income tax rate below the Clinton-era level of 39.6 percent.

The poll found that twice as many people in the U.S. – 53 percent to 27 percent – would blame Republicans instead of the administration if the economy tumbled over the cliff.

In his speech, Sperling also said that the president’s budgets had detailed more specific restraints in entitlements than what Republicans had produced, and also called on the GOP to refrain from any further confrontations over the debt ceiling.

Obama’s most recent offer called for rolling back congressional oversight of the debt ceiling.

“The president is deeply committed to leading on passing a balanced plan that includes tough but smart entitlement reform,” Sperling said.

“We must, for the sake of economic confidence and certainty, end the self-inflicted economic wound of sporadic debt fights that threaten default,” he later added.