During a press conference on Wednesday, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) laid out the GOP’s first proposal for addressing the set of budget issues confronting the next Congress. The so-called “fiscal cliff” is set to occur on January 1st, bringing with it automatic spending spending cuts and tax hikes.

The fiscal cliff was set in motion by the debt ceiling deal of 2010, when Republicans brought the nation to the brink of default due to their intransigence on taxes. At the time, Boehner agreed to a deal that would have increased revenue, though it was quashed by House Republicans.

Now, Boehner is once again suggesting that new revenue should be part of a plan to avoid the fiscal cliff, but only if that revenue coincides with a lowering of tax rates. His pitch is similar to the plan presented by Mitt Romney, which was supposed to boost growth while lowering taxes and making up the revenue from closing loopholes:

For the purposes of forging a bipartisan agreement that begins to solve the problem, we’re willing to accept new revenue under the right conditions. What matters is where the increase revenue comes from and what type of reform comes with it. Does the increased revenue come from government taking a larger share of what the American people earn through higher taxe rates? Or does it come as a byproduct of growing our economy, energized by a simpler, cleaner, fairer tax code, with fewer loopholes and lower rates for all? And at the same time we’re reforming the tax code, are we supporting growth by taking concrete steps to put our country’s entitlement programs on a sounder financial footing or are we just going to continue to duck the matter of entitlements, thus the root of the problem?

Watch it:

Like Romney, Boehner cited the Reagan 1986 tax reform — which included lowering rates and closing loopholes — as proof that his vision of boosting growth (and thus raising revenue) through tax reform is possible. But as Reagan administration economist Bruce Bartlett has noted, the 1986 reform didn’t actually result economic growth: “Real gross domestic product growth was about the same after the 1986 act took effect in 1987 as it was before…By the mid-1990s, it was the consensus view of economists that the Tax Reform Act of 1986 had little, if any, impact on growth.” Other studies came to the same conclusion.

It is theoretically possible to close enough loopholes and deductions to raise revenue in a tax reform package. But Boehner’s insistence that tax reform will cause growth that raises significant revenue is a conservative fantasy. This is the same game Republicans, including Boehner, have played since Obama came into office: promising that they’re open to revenue, so long as taxes never go up.

Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform boasted that 279 Congressional incumbents — and another 286 challengers — signed his “Taxpayer Protection Pledge” to never vote for any tax increases under any circumstances.

But when Democrats fought back against the anti-tax zealotry of Norquist and his Republican minions, many voters reacted positively, rejecting the pledge and its adherents. In fact, the notion of asking billionaires to contribute a little more was a key argument for President Obama’s re-election and Democratic victors around the country.

ThinkProgress has the video report. Watch it:

While not all races have been called, at least 55 Republican House incumbents or candidates who signed the pledge — and 24 Republican Senators or hopefuls — lost on Tuesday. Linda McMahon (R-CT), Senator Scott Brown (R-MA), Treasurer Josh Mandel (R-OH), Secretary of State Charles Summers (R-ME), former Gov. Tommy Thompson (R-WI) all signed the pledge and were attacked by their Democrats opponents in face-to-face debates over the issue. All five were defeated in their Senate bids.

State Sen. Tony Strickland (R-CA), Rep. Bob Dold (R-IL), State Sen. Richard Tisei (R-MA), and Rep. Frank Guita (R-NH) were also attacked by their House race opponents in debates for signing the pledge in this campaign or in the past. All four were also defeated.

In fact, of the fifteen-plus House Republican incumbents who apparently lost re-election, every single one had signed Norquist’s pledge.

Norquist’s group spent more than $15 million on independent expenditures. This included hundreds of thousands on ads explicitly defending candidates like Ricky Gill (R-CA) and State Rep. Lee Anderson (R-GA) against criticisms over their having signed the pledge. Both lost.

ThinkProgress War Room special assistant Emily Seldin contributed to this story.

After Fox News grudgingly called the election for President Obama early Wednesday morning, Fox Business quickly started hawking the idea that a stock market drop on Wednesday morning was in response to Obama’s victory. Stuart Varney and Ed Butowsky claimed the decline was because “the takers have taken over” and investors are afraid of tax hikes:

VARNEY: Dow Industrial is down 177. That is a sell-off. Is it an Obama sell-off? We’ll discuss. With Obama’s victory, the takers have taken over. The makers are clearly in the minority. Am I right? It’s a sell-off the day after the election, with an Obama second term we’re down 183 points.
[...]

VARNEY: And it’s a reaction to the Obama victory?

BUTOWSKY: I don’t see anything else except what’s going on in Europe as well.

VARNEY: Okay, so stocks down, bonds up and this is largely a reaction to the Obama victory.

BUTOWSKY: Without any question in my mind.

Watch it:

In fact, as the Washington Post explained, the market responded positively to Obama’s reelection early in the day, but soon plunged over concerns of the Republican-controlled Congress playing chicken with the upcoming fiscal cliff and a slew of bad economic news out of Europe. (And, of course, stock moves are rarely attributable to any one event.)

The talking point that Obama is somehow bad for the market emerged in 2008, when Fox and other conservative commentators immediately attempted to ascribe stock market fluctuations to Obama’s victory. Conservatives also pointed to a similar drop off after the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act, though the market recovered later in the day once the court’s ruling was clarified.

The Dow Jones industrial average has actually gained 67.9 percent since Obama took office.

With the 2012 election behind them, congressional leaders and President Obama will turn their attention toward a series of expiring tax provisions and automatic spending cuts scheduled to take effect at the beginning of 2013: the so-called “fiscal cliff.” Both parties and the president want to avert many of, if not all of, the pieces of the fiscal cliff puzzle, which includes defense cuts, cuts to domestic spending, and the end of the Bush tax cuts. Here’s what you need to know about the situation facing Congress come January:

– The Middle-Class Tax Hike: House Speaker John Boehner (R) won’t consider tax increases on the wealthy, he said this week, and President Obama has said he won’t sign an extension of the high-income Bush tax cuts. The parties agree on 98 percent of the cuts — those aimed at the middle class — but Republicans have refused to negotiate an extension of those cuts (which also benefit the rich) without an extension of the high-income tax cuts as well. Multiple recent studies have shown that high-income tax cuts don’t stimulate economic growth or job creation, a central claim in the GOP’s defense of them.

– The Payroll Tax Cut Expires: While the focus has largely revolved around the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, the most dangerous tax provision is the expiration of the payroll tax cut, a middle class tax cut that Republicans largely opposed when it came up for renewal earlier this year. After the issue was largely ignored by elected officials through 2012, Congressional Democrats have finally called for extending the payroll tax cut. The Economic Policy Institute estimated that the cut’s expiration would deliver one of the fiscal cliff’s biggest hits to economic growth next year.

– Austerity-Like Spending Cuts: In all, the fiscal cliff represents a bigger dose of austerity than even austerity-happy European countries have instituted. The spending cuts that would go into effect starting in January pose a greater risk to the economy than expiring tax cuts, according to Congressional Budget Office reports. However, the effect would be slow to kick in, making the fiscal cliff really more of a “fiscal slope.” As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities put it, “if there is no agreement by January 1, policymakers will still have some (although limited) time to take steps to avoid the serious adverse economic consequences that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) outlines

– The Debt Limit Is Back: Meanwhile, the U.S. is also on pace to hit its borrowing limit near the end of the year, setting up another fight over raising the debt ceiling. The “fiscal cliff” is itself a creation of the last debt limit fight, when Republicans insisted on massive spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. That fight led to the downgrade of the nation’s credit rating, cost the U.S. as many as one million jobs, and increased the nation’s borrowing costs.

Swing states across the American electoral map repudiated Republican candidates for the United States Senate Tuesday, sending many to defeat and allowing Democrats to strengthen their hold on the nation’s upper legislative chamber. One of the major arguments across key races was over the future of America’s tax code and whether the wealthy needed to pay their fair share or, in some instances, if they should instead receive another tax cut.

Here are four GOP Senate candidates who lost the argument over taxes last night:

1. Sen. Scott Brown — Massachusetts: Massachusetts’ junior senator lost his race to Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren (D) after being repeatedly hit for his opposition to raising taxes on millionaires and for his opposition to a payroll tax cut extension that would have largely benefited the middle class. Taxes were the “sharpest difference” between the two, according to the Boston Globe, and Warren ran ads against Brown’s filibuster of the payroll tax cut extension and in debates tied him to Grover Norquist, the anti-tax activist who authored a radical no-taxes pledge. While Brown opposed raising taxes on the wealthy, that policy was a “central plank” of the victorious Warren’s campaign.

2. Linda McMahon — Connecticut: McMahon, a former professional wrestling executive, released a tax plan that was virtually identical to presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s. And like Romney, McMahon pitched her plan as a tax cut for the middle class even as it provided massive tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations. McMahon often misrepresented the details of that plan, particularly when her opponent, Rep. Chris Murphy (D), challenged her in debates.

3. Tommy Thompson — Wisconsin: Thomspon also faced criticism from his opponent, Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D), for his support of Norquist’s tax pledge, which he seemed to misunderstand in one debate when he stated that it did not prohibit increasing taxes on the wealthy. While Baldwin was a sponsor of the Buffett Rule, President Obama’s plan to institute a minimum tax on millionaires, Thompson supported new tax cuts for the rich.

4. Josh Mandel — Ohio: Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) repeatedly hit Mandel for his support of Norquist’s tax pledge. “Signing a pledge to a fat-cat lobbyist like Grover Norquist is essentially giving away your right to think,” Brown said to Mandel during one of their debates. Mandel called for the elimination of the estate tax and reductions in investment and corporate tax rates, both giveaways to the rich. Mandel also called for a “flatter, fairer” tax code, the type of change that would almost surely raise taxes on low- and middle-income voters while giving the rich a huge tax cut.

American voters last night, while re-electing President Obama and keeping the Senate and the House with their current parties, largely rejected the anti-tax extremism that has seized the right. In addition to re-electing Obama, who had promised to let the Bush tax cuts for the richest 2 percent of Americans to expire, voters rejected several anti-tax ballot questions. Here’s a rundown:

– 60 Percent of Americans favor tax hikes: According to exit polls, six out of ten Americans believe that taxes need to go up, while “only about a third of voters said taxes should not be increased at all.” One in seven said that taxes need to go up on all Americans.

– Florida rejects Amendment 3: Amendment 3, which would have limited public spending and revenue collection via a flawed formula, while requiring supermajorities to override the limits, was easily defeated. The amendment needed 60 percent approval to take effect, but received just 42 percent of the vote.

– Supermajority requirement crushed in Michigan: A proposal to implement a requirement that tax increases receive a supermajority vote in the state legislature was rejected by a vote of 69 percent to 31 percent.

– California approves $6 billion tax increase: California approved both an increase in the sales tax and a tax increase on those making more than $250,000 per year, with the money hopefully preventing cuts to the state’s university system. California, of course, has been the epicenter of nonsensical anti-tax ballot questions for decades.

– Oregon rejects estate tax cut: Oregon voters defeated a ballot measure that would have eliminated the state’s estate tax, which is levied on inheritances of more than $1 million.

Only Washington state passed an extreme anti-tax measure, requiring a supermajority vote to increase revenue. Voters also rejected an increase in the cigarette tax in Missouri.

Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH), meanwhile, is already trying to take tax increases off the table, asserting that the House Republicans’ hold on the lower chamber means there is “no mandate for tax increases.”