Top House conservative cancels plans to unveil alternate deficit proposal

A top House conservative was scheduled to unveil his own “fiscal cliff” plan on Tuesday but has backed off in the wake of the House leadership’s $2.2 trillion deficit offer to President Obama.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the outgoing chairman of the Republican Study Committee, was planning to hold a noon press conference, but the event was canceled mid-morning.

{mosads}The move comes as Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) offer to the White House is coming under fire from the right over its $800 billion in tax revenue increases, even though those are paired with about $1.4 trillion in spending cuts.

While House Republicans have talked loosely of revenue in a debt deal, the plan Boehner unveiled on Monday does not rely exclusively on revenue from economic growth, a move some conservatives view as a significant concession to Obama.

The intention behind Jordan’s press conference was to unveil a plan to defuse the fiscal cliff set of tax increases and indiscriminate spending cuts looming in January.

According to a GOP aide, Jordan was going to propose a bill that wrapped in a House-passed tax bill that extended all the Bush-era rates, including for high-income earners. The bill would also have replaced the $109 billion sequester cuts using the House-passed sequester replacement bill from last spring.

That bill would have cut the deficit by $243 billion over ten years by trimming mandatory spending.

Once Boehner unveiled an offer to Obama on Monday, the presser became “moot,” an aide said.

Jordan still prefers more spending cuts than those Boehner has put forward.

“While it’s better than the president’s ridiculous proposal, he’s looking for a solution that cuts spending, not one that raises taxes,” a GOP aide said.

On Monday, Heritage Action and Americans for Prosperity came out against the Boehner offer. 

The Heritage Foundation blasted the Boehner proposal in a blog post, saying “the Republican counteroffer, to the extent it can be interpreted from the hazy details now available, is a dud. It is utterly unacceptable. It is bad policy, bad economics, and, if we may say so, highly questionable as a negotiating tactic.”

Jordan is term-limited as head of the RSC. He will be replaced in January by Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) who is widely seen as friendly to leadership. Scalise beat out Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ga.) for the position.

This story was updated at 11:40 a.m.