My (half-alas, *not* hungover) look at the Senate fiscal bill schmeer.

So, let’s have us a little look-see here about the deal that went down this morning.  Good news: permanent Alternative Minimum Tax fix (I dunno if there’s actually another extension of the Medicare ‘doc fix*’ or not).  Bad news: tax hikes on people making above $400/$450K, and a bunch of other stuff.  All in all: the below seems to still be true.

And yes: it’s going to pass the House. Inevitable, really: you see, we lost the 2008 Presidential election**. Part of the fallout from that was that taxes were scheduled to go up if nothing was done to keep them from going up. No, it’s not going to mean the end of Boehner as Speaker of the House. There’s nobody willing to be the public face to replace him and the Republican House caucus knows it. No, it’s not going to mean the end of the Republican party, if for no other reason than the memory of that godawful 111th Congress still looms in the memory of just too many people. I know that some people probably don’t want to read this, but I remember what it’s like to have the Democrats running things with no brake whatsoever, and this isn’t it.

(sardonically) Happy New Year.  To quote S.M. Stirling: This is defeat.  Avoid it.  And just be grateful that Democratic partisans aren’t actually all that happier about this deal than we are.  We’re just angry that our idiots in office will not listen to us; the netroots are still angrily and confusingly chasing an elusive, yet fully-tantalizing, political hate-orgasm…

Moe Lane

*Short version: Medicare payments to doctors were scheduled to have been reduced for some time.  However, there’s nothing so permanent as a temporary subsidy, so Congress has been routinely passing extensions of the payments for years.  I don’t know if it happened this time; I assume that it did, because if it doesn’t it will have the same effect on our current pool of medical personnel as the Plague of Justinian…

**Elections have consequences. Which is why I personally fought that damned war until the polling places opened.

6 thoughts on “My (half-alas, *not* hungover) look at the Senate fiscal bill schmeer.”

  1. Yup, it’s going to pass the House. And provide a handy list of Representatives who need to be primaried.

  2. I guess I’d feel worse about it if I had any faith that “Plan B” wouldn’t have just been binned and replaced with what we got anyway.

    I am dismayed by how many R Senators jumped on this. Should have just let the usual suspects do their “betray the base” routine to limit the exposure.

  3. Skip, there will be little to no primarying on this (or any other) issue that may irritate the base. In fact, I think there will be quite a few people associated with the Tea Party that will come to regret ever…ruffling the feathers of one Mitch McConnell these last two or so years. Get ready for a couple more punches to the gut over the next 6-8 months.

    At least you’ll enjoy the snit Dems will be in once they realize McConnell is, in effect, running the US Senate.

    1. Politicians have always sought quick, cheap, simple and easy solutions to long term, expensive, complicated, and difficult problems. Why? Because that’s what they promise the voters to get elected. Apparently, the voters will always believe they can actually have it, too……..

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