“The specific offsets that are in the package are a series of tax provisions. I think they'll be familiar to most of you because they're ideas that we have been talking about for the most part for some time.”

-- White House Director of Management and Budget Jack Lew talking about President Obama’s plan to pay for his proposal for a third stimulus package.

If House Republicans are terrorists and hostage takers for threatening to shut down the government if additional borrowing wasn’t matched with budget cuts, what does it make the Obama Democrats if they threaten a huge tax increase in the midst of a growth recession unless the president’s stimulus package is approved in its entirety?

The president last week laid out his proposal for a third stimulus. It is a smaller version of his February 2009 stimulus: a combination of temporary tax incentives, public works projects and direct aid to keep state and local government payrolls at stimulus levels. The White House estimates the cost at more than $450 billion.

Next week, the president will share his plan for a package of small-scale changes to entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare. He is proposing that the 12-member supercommittee, the congressional panel conjured up to end the impasse over Obama’s request to increase the federal borrowing limit, push though his plan when they do their work...