So let me preface this little rant with the this statement. I am not speaking on the goodness or badness of the Senate passed bill to avert the Fiscal Cliff. I do not purport to be able to say if it works, does not work or is the road sign for the entrance to the Road To Hell. From little I able to grasp of it, it seems like a very weak compromise, but at least it is some sort of compromise. With the Senate voting overwhelmingly in support of it, it at least has some bipartisan support which is rare these days. I don't have the political chops/savvy to critique it. I will leave to more learned people. My rant is aimed solely at the House.
Before I rant on, let me make a point. If NOTHING is done very soon, all the experts (Reboobican and Damnocrat alike) agree that it will be a disaster. Taxes will increase across the board on everyone, massive budget cuts will cause layoffs and furloughs that will leave millions of people without income for an indeterminate amount of time. Prices on many products will double and God only knows what else will happen. To make a long story short (too late), it will be a complete and utter disaster.
Okay back to the rant. So here we are, with a Senate passed item that will, at least temporarily, avert this horrible disaster. It is no where near perfect and only scoots the problems a couple of months down the line, but it does avert the immediate dangers. Hooray for the Senate! The House comes along and says, "Okay we know that Doomsday is about to happen, but we really don't feel like agreeing on this temporary fix." The House says that it will either send the item back to the Senate with "amendments" or "vote on a GOP bill" instead.
Now like I said, this rant isn't about the rightness of the Senate's bill or whether or not the House is acting correctly. I personally feel that the House Reboobicans are correct in demanding more spending cuts, but I also feel that these items could be addressed in the two months to come. BUT what I am really curious about and what this rant is about is "Do the House members realize that any refusal to accept the Senate bill is essentially political suicide?"
I mean think about it. If the House refuses to act in this case immediately and the whole Fiscal Cliff disaster occurs (even if it is only for a couple of months), the blame will fall solely on the House. No one will blame Obama. No blame will fall on the Senate. When taxes increase and jobs are suppressed if not outright cut, all anyone will remember is that (right or wrong) the House failed to stop it from happening.
Remember 2010 when everyone got honked off and voted a whole bunch of incumbents out of office because of the whole "Debt Ceiling" fiasco? Well, if the fiscal disaster everyone is predicting occurs, I see a whole lot more people leaving for home in the next election period. People remember the disasters not the right or wrong of it all.
So if the House does as it claims it is going to do, all fickle Americans will remember is this, "Obama acted, Senate Acted and the House didn't." It won't matter to the American people whether Obama and the Senate were in cahoots with Old Scratch himself and the House was working for the Angels. The House, specifically the House Reboobicans, will absorb all the blame in our eyes. Right or wrong, fair or unfair it will be all we remember when it comes time to vote again.
End of Rant
Addendum to Rant: Let me add this little note. IF our dysfunctional government had gotten off their collective butts months ago and reached even a tentative agreement, this rant wouldn't have been necessary. The House could have added the changes it wanted, sent it back to the Senate for more consideration without all of this fuss. Since neither the President, Reboobicans nor Damnocrats could reach even the tiniest compromise until PAST the last minute, the House is left looking like Scrooge and the Grinch all rolled into one.
End of End of Rant
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