Fiscal Cliff

Thanks for starting the new year out on a great big note of optimism.

Speaking of a new year, there are people like you and JPB with whom I almost consistantly disagree, yet look forward to their posts.

From time to time, you may have to remind me of that.

Specifically which Democrats do you suspect would love nothing more than to see the Senate bill fail in the House?

Love you too, roger.


It looks like the Senate bill is going to tank in the House. Now they're trying to decide if they're going to put it up for a vote as is and see if the Dems can carry it with 40-50 Rs supporting, or amend it with something that will get 217 R votes in the House knowing damn well it will never get through the Senate.

New congress starts at noon on 1/3/13. Final votes on this will have to be prior to that and most of the Senate has left DC.

edit -- Boehner has announced that the House will not vote on the Senate bill without amendments.

In a perverse way....most of them.

I think almost everyone can see this interim measure as a not particularly Band-Aid. The problem is not going to be solved with both sides refusing to see what is painfully obvious...that huge tax increases for everyone is going to be needed. And since we are dedicated to a consumer driven economy...that is a slow, painful way of committing suicide.

The Democrats have more to gain politically by exploiting the recalcitrance of the Republicans than they do by exploiting the "great success" that will come as a result of what they are proposing.

Thanks, Roger.

Personally, I enjoy my conversations with people opposed to me as much as the people who tend to agree with me.

In any case, it appears we live in disgustingly interesting times.

Brit Hume (Fox News) tweeted

@brithume Appears the House GOP's pie-in-sky caucus will blow up deal,leaving new higher tax rates in place & assuring Rs get all blame

an R was one of the two main people who negotiated this deal, and almost all of the R's in the Senate approved this deal. It is not the R's generally who would be to blame, it would be Boehner. besides, maybe this plan should not be approved in its current form, maybe it should be amended. it is within the houses rights to not rubber stamp what one senator and the VP decided....this is democracy baby! this is how the sausage is made.

That's exactly right. And there's nothing else to eat. So get it down and grin and bear it.

Well, they'll be back to looking for a pig to kill come Thursday at 11:59 am.

The House will have to pass an amended bill with 217 R votes if Pelosi is correct about no D votes (remember Boehner's Plan B?). I can't think of a spending amendment that would get 217 Rs and make it through the Senate before noon on Thursday.

We'll see if the sinking Dow gets the House to vote on the Senate bill as passed tomorrow. Shades of TARP revisited.

dont expect much truth in the media accounts if the house refuses to have their rights nullified, all you will hear from the media is that the idiot R's of the house fucked the nation. the media has been even more idiotic and biased than normal as this process has unfolded.

And, don't forget... Boehner pulled himself out of the discussions at the leadership meeting with Obama and said any bill was going to have to come from the Senate (ostensibly because there was nothing he could get through his caucus that didn't contain a poison pill).

The House Rs go back into conference at 5:15 eastern to try to come up with an amendment that will pass the House and not kill the deal. This baby needs to be on Obama's desk in 44 hours or we start over with a new congress.

This isn't "democracy" it is partisan gridlock and infra-partisan bickering within the Republican party. Now it is Eric Cantor vs John Boehner.

The plan should be passed to avert the negative consequences to our economy if a bill is not passed. They've passed the point of having the luxury of time to hassle over this any longer. The government needs to both raise revenue and decrease spending, and the Senate bill does a little of both. The Democrats did compromise on the tax issues, leaving many in their ranks not satisfied either, but they compromised to get a plan passed before the deadline. Similarly, Republicans in the Senate compromised on the decreases in spending, for similar reasons. It's time for the Republicans in the House to do the same--this is not the time to hold our economy hostage to satisfy and appease their partisan interests. Spending cuts can wait for another day, but a bill that will avert the fiscal cliff needs to be passed today, and the Senate bill is a reasonable compromise for both sides.

And it's hard to see how the Republicans will not be blamed, and rightly so, if their willful stubbornness causes us to go over that fiscal cliff.

I follow a lot of conservative media folks and they're mostly on board with taking the deal and fighting the spending portion another day. Eric Erickson from Red State came out quickly against, but they've mostly said that this isn't a bad deal considering how late in the day we are with the timeline on this congress.

If they didn't want to have their rights nullified they should have been watching the clock for the past two years.

i expect that they will, which makes me wonder why Hume is hyperventilating. taking $60 billion a year from mostly the top 2% is a pittance, and it solves a major political problem for the R's. 60 days from now they will be in a good position to impose shrinkage on the government. D's are already whining that Obama has reverted back to selling them out to get a deal, maybe they are right.

The internal logic of that cannot be faulted.

However, that there will be negative consequences is an assertion which cannot be verified without a competent fortune teller. Thus the statement is a non sequitur which is a fancy way of saying a load of rubbish.

How can the pleasures derived from the Christian capitalist spirit be enjoyed when there is a pronounced sense of guilt that it is at the cost of the kids and grandkids? Only by repressing such baleful thoughts of course. And repression is bad for the vital bodily fluids.

Avoiding that is a positive consequence imo. And I'm not talking about hair shirts. Just calming down a little. A controlled soft landing.

Which is why it's ridiculous and downright stupid to let the tea party faction kill this bill.

the tea party has very few votes, they cant kill this deal.

Sure they can. If they force an amendment to get a yes vote from 217-18 R and zero Ds then they've killed the bill because no such amendment will get through the Senate.

the tea party wing of the R's do not control anything close to 217 R votes

They don't need to control 217 votes. They only need to control 25 - the number of no votes that brings an R-only bill down. Beohner can only lose 25 votes from within his own caucus. The Ds want an up-or-down vote on the Senate bill and have said they won't consider any R amendments. That means that Beohner has to come up with 218 on his own. AND, it has to be able to get through the Senate in 43.5 hours or less.