They Swerved
At the last minute the GOP leaders in the House decided not to go over the cliff and allowed a vote on the piece of garbage that the Senate proposed and passed in the early hours of today. This is a win for people on the Federal unemployment compensation, but almost no one else.
In the Senate vote Florida’s junior Senator, Marco Rubio, made sure that everyone knew he voted against it, and the talking heads started chirping about his running for President in 2016. It doesn’t occur to them that he will be up for re-election to the Senate in 2016 and is avoiding a primary challenge from the right with this move. Even if he runs for President, he will want to run for re-election as a back-up plan. The last thing he wants to do is to try to find a job in the civilian sector.
All they did was kick the cuts down the road two months, so they can use the debt limit to screw people, and everyone paying attention knows it.
Congress doesn’t work. Milk prices will probably double because Congress hasn’t passed a farm bill. They have the power to make all of the cuts they want in budget process, but they aren’t passing the appropriations bills – they just keep extending the current spending. If you want to see a real bunch of ‘moochers’ just look at the House Republican caucus.
Update: Apparently the Senate bill included an extension of the current farm bill, but there were no provisions for the states that were impacted by Hurricane Sandy.
On the 150th anniversary of the first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln. signing the Emancipation Proclamation you have a prime example of how far his party has sunk.
3 comments
i thought i read somewhere that this deal basically included extending the current farm bill for several months, like through summer 2013….
found it! http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/01/01/fact-sheet-tax-agreement-victory-middle-class-families-and-economy
“Extends the farm bill through the end of the fiscal year, averting a sharp rise in milk prices at the beginning of 2013.”
So both versions are true, i.e. they still haven’t voted on a farm bill, but they extended the current farm bill. Given that all proposed laws expire with the Congress that introduced them, they are going to have to start from scratch for all of the pending bills.
I edited the post to reflect the extension.
The last two years has to be the most worthless, do nothing Congress since the nation was founded. I certainly hope that there are no major disasters this year, because Congress will not respond, as New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut just found out. A tornado outbreak in the Republican heartland will see no help from Congress, and I expect the same lack of response if we have a bad hurricane season in 2013.