The US House of Representatives has passed the "fiscal cliff" bill, ending a months-long dispute over the measure that averts tax hikes and spending cuts.
The bill's passage on a 257-167 vote in the House of Representatives on Tuesday evening sealed a hard-won political triumph for the president less than two months after he secured re-election while calling for higher taxes on the wealthy.
alJazeera
The bill's passage on a 257-167 vote in the House of Representatives on Tuesday evening sealed a hard-won political triumph for the president less than two months after he secured re-election while calling for higher taxes on the wealthy.
alJazeera
Of course, to get elected, he was calling for tax increases for those making over $250,000. And the bill he'll sign is for over $400,000.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
UPDATE:
This whole puppet show was the result of a jerry-rigged burlesque of the legislative process that was devised a year ago because the House had been rendered dysfunctional by a claque of feral children. This whole puppet show likely will be replayed -- with even more spectacular special effects! -- in March when we deal with Fiscal Cliff 2: Sequester Boogaloo because of jerry-rigged burlesques that are part of this new deal of which everyone is so very proud.
[...]
I don't trust either side to develop a big, bold, balanced plan that doesn't pretty much hose most of the country because, in too many cases, their constituencies are no longer most of the people in the country. (How many times have you heard the current deal praised because The Markets were happy and how many times have you heard it praised because it extended unemployment benefits for a niggling 12 months? Thought so.)
[...]
This was a deal cobbled together by the vice-president and the minority leader of the Senate and passed by a Republican House with more Democratic votes than Republican votes. This leaves the government still in a weird, suspended place, creating tiny mechanisms within itself on the fly just to keep running, and then newer tiny mechanisms on the fly to keep the previous tiny mechanisms running. Sooner or later, you can't improvise your way out of your basic problems, which is that one of your two political parties continues to have a kind of prion disease eating away at its brain. This deal last night did not extinguish the nihilistic streak in the Republican party, nor its delight in legislative vandalism.
[...]
Last night, at literally the 11th hour of the first day of 2013, the House Of Representatives condescended to do a little part of its job. To borrow a phrase from Chris Rock, what do they want? A cookie?
And then, after everybody stopped watching, the Republicans adjourned the House without voting on a bill that would have extended aid to the victims of superstorm Sandy. The last act of this glorious night of bipartisan compromise on the part of the House majority was to flip off people who are still picking through the rubble in the middle of winter.
Charlie Pierce
[...]
I don't trust either side to develop a big, bold, balanced plan that doesn't pretty much hose most of the country because, in too many cases, their constituencies are no longer most of the people in the country. (How many times have you heard the current deal praised because The Markets were happy and how many times have you heard it praised because it extended unemployment benefits for a niggling 12 months? Thought so.)
[...]
This was a deal cobbled together by the vice-president and the minority leader of the Senate and passed by a Republican House with more Democratic votes than Republican votes. This leaves the government still in a weird, suspended place, creating tiny mechanisms within itself on the fly just to keep running, and then newer tiny mechanisms on the fly to keep the previous tiny mechanisms running. Sooner or later, you can't improvise your way out of your basic problems, which is that one of your two political parties continues to have a kind of prion disease eating away at its brain. This deal last night did not extinguish the nihilistic streak in the Republican party, nor its delight in legislative vandalism.
[...]
Last night, at literally the 11th hour of the first day of 2013, the House Of Representatives condescended to do a little part of its job. To borrow a phrase from Chris Rock, what do they want? A cookie?
And then, after everybody stopped watching, the Republicans adjourned the House without voting on a bill that would have extended aid to the victims of superstorm Sandy. The last act of this glorious night of bipartisan compromise on the part of the House majority was to flip off people who are still picking through the rubble in the middle of winter.
Charlie Pierce
FURTHER UPDATE:
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