by JAKE SHERMAN AND CARRIE BUDOFF BROWN, Politico
In the latest in a tit-for-tat between Capitol Hill and the White House to avert the fiscal cliff, House Republican leaders sent President Barack Obama a $2.2 trillion counteroffer on Monday — but it doesn’t hike tax rates on the wealthy or deal explicitly with tricky issues like the debt ceiling and the sequester.
After days of Democratic criticism that they lacked a plan, the Republican leadership endorsed a framework first outlined last year by Erskine Bowles, a Democrat who led the president’s debt reduction committee.
The proposal, unveiled by senior GOP aides Monday during a briefing in the Capitol, assumes $800 billion in fresh governmental revenue through tax reform, $600 billion in health savings and changes to an inflation formula that determines benefit levels across government programs, including Social Security.