House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi argued Tuesday that Speaker John Boehner's "Plan B" proposal for a fiscal cliff deal is a "tactic" and "not a serious proposal" -- the plan, however, is one Pelosi herself has advocated for repeatedly in 2012.
"It's really hard to imagine why they even came up with it," Pelosi said of Boehner's plan in an interview with Andrea Mitchell, "unless they just wanted to prove to their members that unless 218 of them were ready to raise rates, it's not going to pass. The Democrats are not going to give them that success."
"It's a tactic, but it's not a serious proposal," she added.
Boehner's plan would raise rates for income over $1 million, which Pelosi advocated for in 2012. Pelosi said her support for that threshold was an effort to "smoke out" Republicans on tax rates this year in the Tuesday interview.
BuzzFeed's Zeke Miller noted Tuesday the tax plan proposed by Boehner was backed repeatedly by Pelosi this year:
In May, Pelosi sent Boehner a letter calling for the immediate passage of a middle class tax cuts up to that level, while President Barack Obama was on the campaign trail calling for taxes to rise on incomes over $250,000. The White House has since revised that target at $400,000 in ongoing negotiations with Boehner, but has shown few signs it would accept the $1 million level.
"Democrats believe that tax cuts for those earning over a million dollars a year should expire and that we should use the resulting revenues to pay down the deficit," Pelosi said in the letter.
View the full exchange below: