It looks like Obama won’t have any difficulty getting his tax compromise passed. I watched Jon Kyl extolling its virtues on the Senate floor this morning. What really struck me was the sight of Jon Kyl talking up the virtues of a bill that will do as much damage to the budget deficit as the Stimulus Bill did, and without any apologies to the Tea Partiers who expressed a desire for no more deficit spending. It reminds me of how Bush responded to the 2006 midterms by adding troops to Iraq. If the public was sending a message about deficit spending, the Republicans didn’t hear it.
What do you make of the roll call on the cloture vote? Strange bedfellows, eh?
I am looking forward to the spectacle of Reps DeFazio and Shadegg, standing shoulder to shoulder in defense of the workers, fighting to expropriate the expropriators.
Le Front Populaire vive!
yeah, although Shadegg may not appreciate the irony.
Essentially, this bill ensconces the Republican view of tax policy into the center of tax thought.
It’s a disaster, and there is no advantage in denying that.
It’s very easy to figure out the roll call.
Merkely and Wyden are ducking the cloture vote.
Bingaman, Brown, Gillibrand are up for re-election in 2012 and might also have taken principled stands, knowing that it would pass anyway.
Udall, Hagan, Lautenberg, and Levin are up for re-election in 2014, and this time they know we won’t forget even for four years. And it is a cloture vote; so it’s a freebie.
Feingold and Voinovich are lame ducks. Feingold has a number of principled reasons for voting against the bill; let’s see if he does on the final vote. Voinovich has a lot of reasons for wanting to leave a last FU to Mitch McConnell.
Sanders and Leahy are voting together.
Coburn, DeMint, Ensign, and Sessions are pandering to the Tea Party in hopes of bargaining positions in leadership now or in the future.
That’s what I make of the vote. A lot of kabuki.
bob casey’s office told me that the wealthy create jobs, and that cutting taxes will do that. then they yelled at me for pointing out that if tax cuts for the rich work, how does that explain the unemployment rate in Pennsylvania and the nation.
Meanwhile, casey’s legislative aide told the former director of HCAN PA (a friend of mine) that Casey hates the bill and only passed it for the UI extension.
Those two messages contradict each other. someone’s either stupid, a liar, got bad messaging, or a combination of the three.
I would believe the legislative aide instead of a random person who’s been driven nuts answering the phone. Not that Casey will trumpet the real reason.
the real reason being that he’s an idiot. (bob casey’s status as a legacy politician is well-documented. nice enough guy, but about as much brain-power as plankton).
“legacy politician” = “offspring of a politician”, eh
Like:
Walter Jones (R), son of Walter Jones (D))
George W. Bush, Jeb Bush, sons of George H. W. Bush, son of Prescott Bush
Lisa Murkowski, daughter of Frank Murkowski
Mary Landrieu, daughter of Moon Landrieu
Ben Quayle, son of Dan Quayle
John Quincy Adams, son of John Adams
It’s an American tradition
“legacy” also implies the politician in question got to where he/she is on the basis of the parents’ accomplishments or name. that’s 100% true of George W. Bush as well as Boob Casey.
Don’t forget Evan Bayh … son of the semi-famous Birch Bayh.
I knew I missed a big one.
Wanted to hear your opinion on a different subject:
If Voinovich the lame duck wants to screw over McConnell one last time, why won’t he vote for repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell?
Not a rhetorical question. I just wanted to know what you think.
That’s a good question. Where does Voinovich stand today on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell after the DoD report came out? Last info I could find on the Google was dated in September.
Voinovich voted against cloture on the most recent DADT repeal.
Speaking as an Ohio resident who lived here through St. Georgie’s tenure as governor as well as Senator, my personal opinion is that Ohio’s beloved St. Georgie just hates gay people. He’s and always has been. He has various excuses – first deferring to the military and most recently tears about procedural vote issues (suddenly deferring to the military isn’t as important when the military is telling him something he doesn’t want to hear). But that’s just cover – he just doesn’t like gay folks and never has.
Lautenberg’s already about a hundred and seven years old. I doubt positioning himself for 2014 makes that much of a difference to him.
He’s 86. I wonder if he wants to try and outdo Strom Thurmond.
What’s the landscape look like for a Democratic bench or Republican opposition? I know that’s a ways out.
But with all these folks, watch what they do on the final vote. It’s all too easy to pander on a procedural vote against something.
He’s not just 86. He’s 86 and has been fighting cancer. I think his goal is to serve out his term.
Feingold is not your usual lame duck, though. His concession speech made it sound like he planned to run for something, and he’s ruled out a primary challenge to Obama. Herb Kohl’s seat is up in 2012, and he’s expected to retire. Feingold may have his sights on getting back into the Senate in the near future.
How ’bout Obama and almost any Republican you wanna’ name?
This is all about the Senate. Yes there is a lot of talk about the House in the article, but it’s all from the senate’s perspective. I’m not so sure it will be such smooth sailing for Obama in the House.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/14/tax-cut-deal-handling-ang_n_796341.html
I have been a strong supporter of Obama up to now, questioned many things but almost always gave him the benefit of the doubt, tried to find rationales to defend him. And he has indeed done a lot of good things. But the way he has handled this just sucks, period. He’s lost me on this one. I only pray the House can do something about it.
It was never really in doubt this would happen, since when have tax cuts for the rich not passed?
Well there was one notable year. 1935. John D. Rockefeller and William Randolph Hearst were not happy.
And the marginal rate got up to 90% during World War II somehow.
(to me anyway) to try and think of an analogous vote in the last 30 years. If you start from the assumption that the tax cuts for the rich cut against core Democratic principles, the closest thing I can think of was the budget deal of 1991. It was in that deal that Bush agreed to raise taxes, after famously uttering his “no new taxes” pledge at the ’88 convention.
About a year, and a recession, after the budget deal, Bush found himself being challenged within his own party from the right. I worked in New Hampshire in 1992 and remember how much anger there was among Republicans, and how close Buchanan came to beating Bush there. The combination of a weak economy and the perception among his base that he had betrayed core GOP principles created enourmous anger within his own party. Had a decent candidate run, I think Bush would have lost New Hampshire.
At this point there is nothing near the anger at Obama among the rank and file over the tax cuts for the rich as there was at Bush for raising taxes. What is similiar, though, is the probable direction of the economy. Unemployment didn’t really go up much in ’92 and GDP increased in each quarter in 1992. Yet Bush’s approval rating continued downward.
So the question is whether the deal for the tax cuts for the rich, coupled with a weak economy, would be enough to generate a real challenge to Obama in 2012? New Hampshire is later in the cycle this time, and should the economy double dip there would be more time to put together a challenge.
At this point, the polling suggests the rank and file actually support the tax cuts, so the analogy is obviously imperfect. But I would not be shocked for that vote to provide the basis for a challenge if the economy does not recover.
I should add that such a challenge would almost certainly hand the election to the GOP.
A good analogy. I myself am totally annoyed at Obama. The “man” is a eunuch. I have no stomach to listen to his bullshit about how reluctant he is about the tax cuts to quadrillionaires, blah blah blah. Nauseating.
So I am pretty sure that we are gonna lose the WH in 2012. And at this point I figger, a la Nader, that there’s only a hair’s worth of difference between Obama and, say, Romney. Romney would kick his ass at this point.
I don’t give a damn who supports the tax cuts. Of those who supported Obama, who made telephone calls, who made contributions, I don’t think many of them support this stupid bill.
Here are the implications. You are going to see the same kind of showdown over raising the debt limit. Watch the President pre-emptively make the Republicans’ cuts for them. Start brainstorming what those cuts might be. Public pressure is the only that has a remote chance of slowing down this collapse, and I said remote chance.
On another topic, if the healthcare reform act indeed did not have a severability clause in it, it is because someone stripped it out in combining bills. Both the Senate and the House bills came out of markup with a severability clause. In fact, it it passed without a severability clause, I would begin to suspect that the whole process was a scam on the voters; it is almost SOP to put severability clauses in all legislation as a matter of course.
We must demand a carbon tax out of it. Anyway, Robert Gibbs come February/March: “No one could have predicted. Shut up, SHUT up, SHUT UP SHUT UP!!!:
Corker Assembling Bloc to Demand Reforms Ahead of Debt Ceiling Vote
Thanks for asking about the severability clause. I don’t understand why this hasn’t been commented on. From day 1, it was known that there would be a court challenge to the bill. It would be staggering incompetence if the severability clause was left out as just an oversight, and I can’t believe that that is what happened. One of the sixty votes must have been contingent on removing the severability from the bill, and it was done furtively. It does begin to seem like some kind of scam.
I’m not sure our incompetent media has bothered to look at the law. I tried, but I haven’t found the relevant section, generally entitled “Other provisions”.
And I am DAMN certain that the machines which do the editing have version control, and they have login control, and thus SOMEONE knows who stripped that out. That person needs to be identified. Who stripped it out?
It is not certain it is stripped out or if the media is just blowing smoke.
Bipartisanship at any cost? Mission Accomplished!