Now that the House Republican loons have "just said no," what happens next?

Good afternoon, everybody. It is no secret that there hasn’t been an abundance of partisanship in Washington this year. And that’s why what happened on Saturday was such a big deal. Nearly the entire Senate -- including almost all of the Republicans -- voted to prevent 160 million working Americans from receiving a tax increase on January 1st. Nearly the entire Senate voted to make sure that nearly 2.5 million Americans who are out there looking for a job don’t lose their unemployment insurance in the first two months of next year. And just about everybody -- Democrats and Republicans -- committed to making sure that early next year we find a way to extend the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance through the end of 2012. But now, even though Republicans and Democrats in the Senate were willing to compromise for the good of the country, a faction of Republicans in the House are refusing to even vote on the Senate bill -- a bill that cuts taxes for 160 million Americans. And because of their refusal to cooperate, all those Americans could face a taxhike in just 11 days, and millions of Americans who are out there looking for work could find their unemployment insurance expired.

Now, let’s be clear: Right now, the bipartisan compromise that was reached on Saturday is the only viable way to prevent a tax hike on January 1st. It’s the only one. All of the leaders in Congress -- Democrats and Republicans -- say they are committed to making sure we extend the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance for the entire year. And by the way, this is something I called for months ago.

The issue is, is that the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate worked on a one-year deal, made good progress, but determined that they needed more time to reach an agreement. And that’s why they passed an insurance policy -- to make sure that taxes don’t go up on January 1st. In fact, the House Republicans say they don’t dispute the need for a payroll tax cut. What they’re really trying to do, what they’re holding out for, is to wring concessions from Democrats on issues that have nothing to do with the payroll tax cut -- issues where the parties fundamentally disagree. So a one-year deal is not the issue; we can and we will come to that agreement, as long as it’s focused on the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance and not focused on extraneous issues. The issue right now is this: The clock is ticking; time is running out. And if the House Republicans refuse to vote for the Senate bill, or even allow it to come up for a vote, taxes will go up in 11 days.

I saw today that one of the House Republicans referred to what they’re doing as “high-stakes poker.” He’s right about the stakes, but this is not poker, this is not a game -- this shouldn’t be politics as usual. Right now, the recovery is fragile, but it is moving in the right direction. Our failure to do this could have effects not just on families but on the economy as a whole. It’s not a "game" for the average family who doesn’t have an extra 1,000 bucks to lose. It’s not a "game" for somebody who’s out there looking for work right now and might lose his house if unemployment insurance doesn’t come through. It’s not a "game" for the millions of Americans who will take a hit when the entire economy grows more slowly because these proposals aren’textended.

I just got back from a ceremony atAndrews Air Force Base, where we received the flag and the colors that our troops fought under in Iraq, and I met with some of the last men and women to return home from that war. And these Americans, and all Americans who serve, are the embodiment of courage and selflessness and patriotism, and when they fight together, and sometimes die together, they don’t know and they certainly don’t care who’s a Democrat and who’s a Republican and how somebody is doing in the polls and how this might play in the spin room. They work as a team, and they do their job. And they do it for something bigger than themselves. The people in this town need to learn something from them. We have more important things to worry about than politics right now. We have more important things to worry about than saving face, or figuring out internal caucus politics. We have people who are counting on us to make their lives just a little bit easier, to build an economy where hard work pays off and responsibility is rewarded. And we owe it to them to come together right now and do the right thing.

That’s what the Senate did. Democrats and Republicans in the Senate said, we’re going to put our fights on other issues aside and go ahead and do what’s right on something we all agree to. Let’s go ahead and do it. We’ll have time later for the politics; we’ll have time later to have fights around a whole bunch of other issues. Right now, though, we know this is good for the economy -- and they went ahead and did the right thing. I need the Speaker and House Republicans to do the same: Put politics aside, put aside issues where there are fundamental disagreements, and come together on something we agree on. And let’s not play brinksmanship. The American people are weary of it; they’re tired of it. They expect better. I’m calling on the Speaker and the House Republican leadership to bring up the Senate bill for a vote. Give the American people the assurance they need in this holiday season. Thank you.

"[B]ecause of the rigged vote today, the Senate agreement to lower taxes will NEVER go to the President, and it will NEVER become law. Under this rigged process, those of us who support the bipartisan bill have no chance of winning today. That's a pretty neat trick: no matter how the vote goes, the Tea Party Republicans in the House still win -- and the American people lose!"

-- Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY), today on HuffPost

by Ken

Round and round it goes, where it stops, nobody knows. Except that this much we know: As long as the loony Right has a say, where it stops will suck; the only question is the exact dimensions of the suckitation. And since the loons are perfectly content to allow nothing to be done, they have a controlling say.

I'm assuming that, despite the theatrics, we haven't heard the last of a temporary payroll-tax-cut extension, but then, who knows? Over there on the Beyond the Sanity Horizon Right they're pretty confident that they're safe from any public-relations crusade that could be launched against them with the likely effect of their winding up wishing they'd never been born, if such a thing were to materialize, which they know it won't. It is, of course, what the more media-savvy among them would be doing already if the shoe were on the other foot.

Of course lost in the shuffle is what an overall bad idea the payroll-tax cut was to begin with, and remains, designed as it is to pave the way for the extermination of Social Security. (See Ian Welsh's Dec. 12 post, "There’s a hardly a 'progressive' alive who isn’t a moron or a sellout"). With the Right firmly in command of the discussion agenda, fronting for the plutocratic make-believe "centrists," the payroll-tax cut has become the only shred of economic largesse available to be thrown the way of the non-1%.

What's more, the rockheads of the Right have managed, by luck or design, to include in the carnage other programs of economic importance to the non-elites, like the unemployment-insurance continuation provisions mentioned by the president, but also the Medicare physician payment cuts that will make medical care increasingly unavailable to Medicare-dependent seniors. (Hardly a negative consideration to the elites, since Medicare is in their bomb sights alongside Social Security. Who isn't in favor of turning a government program that works so well into a boondoggle for fat-cat private insurance companies, who will grin and wave as seniors suffer and die? Bye-bye, suckers!)


WHAT WILL TODAY'S DEVELOPMENTS COST AMERICANS?

from the Center for American Progress (click to enlarge)


CURIOUS ABOUT THE NUTS 'N' BOLTS
OF LEGISLATIVE OBSTRUCTIONISM?

Are you hearing too that the crucial reason the House Republicans wouldn't allow a vote on the Senate compromise is fear that it would pass? Anyway, here's the HuffPost piece by NY Rep. Louise Slaughter about the House GOP legislative gyrations from which I extracted the quote up above:

I want to help explain what is happening on the floor of the House of Representatives. We should be voting to extend middle class tax cuts, but through some legislative acrobatics, the Republican Majority has designed a vote that will guarantee that a tax break for the middle class will not be sent to the President's desk.

Here is how it works. Last night, the Majority announced that we would have an "up-or-down" vote on whether or not to extend a tax cut for 160 million Americans, and provide unemployment insurance for those without jobs.

But after a stormy 2-hour closed-door conference, they reversed course. With indications that some House Republicans may, in fact, vote for a tax break, the Majority changed our vote today.

Instead of an up-or-down vote on the Senate amendment itself, we are now voting on whether or not we disagree with the Senate agreement to extend tax cuts for the middle class. Regardless of the vote total, today's vote will not move the bill forward. Even if every single legislator votes to agree with the Senate amendment, the bill would not be headed to the President's desk -- it would still be defeated and we would have to start all over again.

You read that correctly, because of the rigged vote today, the Senate agreement to lower taxes will NEVER go to the President, and it will NEVER become law.

Under this rigged process, those of us who support the bipartisan bill have no chance of winning today.

That's a pretty neat trick: no matter how the vote goes -- the Tea Party Republicans in the House still win -- and the American people lose!

We need a tax cut for the middle class. I'm disappointed that the Republican Majority has decided to prevent a tax cut extension instead of holding an up-or-down vote. The American people want a fair shot, not a rigged vote.

Bear in mind that at that stormy two-hour conference meeting Representative Slaughter refers to, as the Washington Post reported, "House Republicans compared themselves to the underdog, principled Scots in the movie Braveheart and, over takeout chicken sandwiches, promised to knock down the Senate bill."


WHY DID THE GOP LEADERSHIP DEVISE
THIS CONVOLUTED STRATEGY?

Here's Brian Beutler at TPM:

House GOP aides basically admitted this to reporters yesterday, but it bears repeating. The reason they fashioned a Rube Goldberg-esque procedural device to kill the Senate payroll tax cut compromise is that they know they’re now in political free fall on the issue. By doing things the way they did, at least vulnerable House Republicans can say that they didn’t vote against a tax cut for the middle class.

This was probably the only way House GOP leaders were ever going to get the minority of their caucus on board with the vote. And if you want proof, look no further than the handful of Republicans who defected from their leadership Tuesday. Or, better yet, vulnerable Senate Republicans who are in cycle in 2012.

IT SHOULD GO WITHOUT SAYING THAT WHEN RIGHT-
WINGERS "TAKE A STAND," THERE'LL BE LOTSA LIES

And when there are lotsa lies being told, GOP superscumbag Eric Cantor can't be far from the action. Have you heard the one about the letter the man who couldn't tell the truth if his life depended on it has been flashing to prove what a terrible idea the stopgap two-month extension is? He insisted to Wolf Blitzer on CNN that it's "been deemed unworkable by the National Payroll Reporting Consortium." Why should anyone be surprised to learn, as Alexander Bolton reported in The Hill, that "a former Bush administration official was intimately involved in a decision by a group representing payroll processing companies to send out a letter Monday criticizing Senate-passed payroll tax legislation"?

Public records filed with the Senate office of public records show that two former Republican aides with the Groom Law Group registered to lobby for the consortium in July.

They are William Sweetnam, Jr., a former GOP aide on the Senate Finance Committee, and Brigen Winters, a former GOP aide to the House Ways and Means Committee. . . .

A congressional Democratic aide said Sweetnam manipulated the National Payroll Reporting Consortium.

"He pulled the strings on this whole thing. He orchestrated this whole letter. This guy is a Republican and a Bush guy," said the aide. "The payroll folks run the coalition but they're pawns. This guy really manipulated the trade organization."

Does anyone think the .1% doesn't know how to get its way? Especially when the key component is the strategic application of crisp cash.


IS "SUNNY JOHN" BOEHNER FEELING THE HEAT?

Poor Sunny John! As the AP's Laurie Kellman notes in "Tax cut fight ends ugly year for Boehner":

John Boehner vowed early on that as speaker, he would let the House "work its will." At the end of his first year in charge of the fractious Republican-controlled chamber, it's clear he has little choice.

An uncompromising band of conservatives, led by GOP freshmen to whom Boehner owes his speakership, has repeatedly forced him to back away from deals with President Barack Obama, Democrats and, this week, even one struck by Senate Republicans. Gridlock, again and again, has defined Congress in the Boehner era even as Americans fume and the economy continues to wobble.

What Kellman doesn't seem to consider is what the poor schlub was supposed to do. After all, it wasn't exactly news, before the 112th Congress even convened, that the soon-to-be speaker was going to have a heckuva time trying to keep his teabagger-infested majority functional. He does appear to have screwed up on the payroll-tax mess, thinking he could wink-and-pray his way through to acceptance of the Senate-approved compromise.

In a closed meeting Monday night, a few Republicans gave voice to widely whispered questions about Boehner's ability and willingness to represent them in negotiations with the White and Senate. They were incensed that the Senate had overwhelmingly passed a two-month extension of a payroll tax cut for 160 million Americans and then left town for the holidays. House Republicans were demanding a year-long tax cut, but there was no longer a Senate in session to negotiate with.

How could this have happened, Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., asked Boehner, according to multiple officials who were present.

Rep. Cliff Stearns was more direct: Was the Senate deal really a total surprise? Or did Boehner give some sort of tacit agreement?

But even allowing for a grand whiff by Sunny John, I don't hear anyone suggesting what he could have done. What those "whispering" Republicans are whispering about is outrage that their nominal leader may have been willing to deal. They aren't.

Is there some hidden fantasy here of a more crack-the-whip type of leader? Much as there was when Harry Reid seemed to have so little control over that big majority Senate Democrats enjoyed briefly at the start of the Obama administration? But just as it seemed to me that there was hardly any room for whip-cracking with the Senate Dems, I don't see how a "stronger" House GOP leader would have produced anything but even fiercer gridlock.

It's a mess, for sure.

UPDATE: Research assistance by Howie

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