And Mitch McConnell still has 47 votes in the Senate, which means that he has enough to prevent cloture. So this is actually a pretty strong statement.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) slammed the door Thursday morning on Democratic demands to raise tax rates on families earning more than $250,000 per year.
“We’re insisting on keeping tax rates where they are, first and foremost, to protect jobs and because we don’t think government needs the money in the first place,” McConnell said on the Senate floor.
Even the 45 that McConnell will have in January will be enough to avoid cloture – and note, please, that the next Congress will be as about as ideologically divided as we’ve seen in a while, thanks largely to the way that Pelosi and Reid have been enthusiastically purging their internal ranks. Which is their privilege, and I’m not even really criticizing them for it, per se… but this situation could bee seen as an unintended consequence of such affairs.
Also: at this point they’re really not Bush’s tax cuts. They’re Obama’s; he signed off on them, after all.
Moe Lane
PS: If the Media was as good at character assassination as both the Media’s most fervent boosters and its most fervent detractors think that it is, Romney would have been lucky to get 40% of the vote. Don’t assume that the enemy is seven feet tall and farts fire, in other words.
RT @moelane: #rsrh Mitch McConnell indicates his willingness to shoot the hostage.: http://t.co/JmCiyAtW
RT @moelane: #rsrh Mitch McConnell indicates his willingness to shoot the hostage.: http://t.co/JmCiyAtW
Given that our tax and spend policies are unsustainable, it makes little difference if we compromise or not: the pain entailed when these policies finally collapse is unavoidable.
That said, I would advise the House to pass only clean bills if they do agree to any compromise. This will allow them to refuse to compromise in the joint committee when the Senate adds their bells, whistles and poison pills to the bills.
I’ll believe it when I see it happen. Till then, just empty words.