On the tariff issue, the drafting of a compromise tariff was assigned in December to the House Ways and Means Committee, now headed by Gulian C. Verplanck. Debate on the committee's product on the House floor began in January 1833. The Verplanck tariff proposed reductions back to 1816 levels over the next two years while maintaining the basic principle of protectionism. The anti-Jackson protectionists saw this as an economic disaster that did not even allow the Tariff of 1832 to be tested and "an undignified truckling to the menaces and blustering of South Carolina." Northern Democrats did not oppose it in principle, but still demanded protection for the varying interests of their own constituents. Those sympathetic to the nullifiers wanted a specific abandonment of the principle of protectionism and were willing to offer a longer transition period as a bargaining point. The Verplanck tariff was clearly not going to be implemented.