Comments

1
For all it's faults, the Obama-Republican deal would heave also given many breaks to the poor and middle class and extended unemployment, in addition to the bonus tax cuts for the rich, that, in the long run will bankrupt the country.

Given the short duration of the lame duck and the number of items we want pushed through before we lose the House, I wonder if this is really the fight for Progressives to have with Obama.
2
Pelosi's bluffing. She'll bring this to the floor. If not, I hope you're ready for nothing.

Because like it or not, we don't have the votes to beat a filibuster in the senate (which will surely come. Sorry unemployed people. Go get your Christmas dinner with Dan's idealolgy.

3
@mattyoder

Your logic goes something like this:

We'll buy you dinner if you let the Republicans set your house on fire and shoot your dog. You want dinner, don't you?
4
This morning Charles Rangel, the chair of Ways & Means, said nobody's made a deal with him.

On NPR.

It is an ex-deal.

Kind of like when the suburbs tried to tell Seattle who our Mayor was and we ignored them.
5
If the house is already burning and the dogs dead may as well get a dinner out of it
6
can this senate pass it, and then the NEXT congress pass it? hold firm, actual liberals!

oh, and remember to scream bloody murder about the deficit in EVERY PUBLIC STATEMENT YOU MAKE.
7
Good one, that's exactly what this is like (sic). I feel like I just heard from a Republican telling me that Iran is like a school bully and what we need to do is punch him in the nose and then he'll respect us. Can we cease lazy immature metaphors?

No, my logic is that purity gets you no where. Dems in congress got us into this mess by waiting until now to bring the tax cuts up. There are very few options left. And there is a bloc of 40 senators drooling to make all of us look like we don't care about middle class families. Democrats can't be fueled by hate for the rich. And the list of things that can still be accomplished (START ratified, DADT being signed, Unemployment extensions) if we swallow hard on something that is at most a statement.
8
Wow. That takes real balls.
9
It's better to let ALL the tax cuts expire than to cave to the Republicans. Maybe Pelosi actually realizes this.
10
Wait, Obama's a Democrat!?
11
@7 wrong.

The Senate Majority Leader can force a roll call vote on the floor of the Senate today on a money bill.

With a straight majority.

Everything else is weasel words.

50 votes plus the VP.

That's HOW EASY IT IS.
13
I like this, but I have a hard time believing that Pelosi will let the unemployment checks run out. So unless she's willing to play chicken with a stand-alone unemployment extension, she's likely to get some mild concessions and then whip votes to pass this crappy deal.

I don't know, would playing chicken on unemployment extensions look like playing with people's lives during Christmas? In a just world, the Republicans would get the blame, but you just know that they'd pin it on the Democrats. If the Congress had the backing of the president it would help a lot in selling the deal, but they don't. And the media is complicit in blaming everything on Democrats. It's really fucking depressing.
14
On second thought, Pelosi wouldn't have to play chicken on unemployment extensions. She could pass it just fine. It's Reid who would have to make that call.
15
Pretty telling that the only "man" in the Democratic Party is a 60 year old grandmother.
16
Well, Obama was successful in at least one sense: He united the democrats and republicans. Now both parties are pissed at him.
17
Yes, Yes, Lets just have everyone fight everyone, BRILLIANT!
18
Yes, Will @11, I'm sure every Democrat in the Senate AND Biden, who actually brokered the deal in question, will vote against a sitting president from their own party.

Are you really that stupid, or just trying to be funny?
19
#14, yes you beat me to it. look at the house record over the last two years. it's amazing. it's the senate that's fucked it up every time.
20
@3 - The Republicans would like to know how you expect to prepare a meal for yourself with your house all burned down like that. The Republicans don't think you've really thought this through.
21
Regarding the unemployment extension:

The deal on the table does not make unemployment available beyond 99 weeks. If you are coming up on your 99th week of unemployment, or will do so in the next 13 months, the deal on the table will not save you. What the deal on the table does do is extend the current unemployment framework, which allows people to draw unemployment for up to 99 weeks rather than the usual 26 weeks, for another 13 months. "99ers" would still be cut off just before Christmas, contrary to the impression given by multiple politicians.
22
@21 which makes the "deal" even worse than it's been portrayed as.
23
19
There is no doubt the House has done a great, productive job the past two years. But that means nothing. Until anyone (Will in Seattle) here can tell me how to break a 40 person block of greed assholes in the senate, everything the house passes is just feel good theory.

Event the President wishes this was different, but it ain't.
24
@14: No, Will, you're wrong on procedure.

They can force an up-or-down vote on the reconciliation of a bill already passed in House & Senate, but for new business like this -- which the Senate has never passed -- they'll still need to get past the cloture vote to bring it to a simple majority vote.

But you're Canadian, what would you know...
25
19

and now the House is ours.

coincidence?
26
Pelosi single handedly killed Bush's Social Security "reform." Too bad she's being replaced by that mutant orange freak.
27
That's more like it, Dems! Block anything short of everything you want. That's what I want the Democrats to do: act more like Republicans.

Please wait...

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