General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCongress knew the cliff was coming. In fact, Congress made the cliff.
About those spoiled children we pay to govern usDan Amira is (rightly) incensed at all the complaining members of Congress -- and particularly the Senate -- are doing in the New York Times and elsewhere about having to come back to Washington to work on the the quote fiscal cliff crisis endquote.
Proud Public Servant
(2,097 posts)Republicans made the cliff:
- Tax cuts that expire were a GOP idea, passed when the GOP controlled both houses of Congress and signed intop law by a GOP president.
- Boehner characterized the original deal that would ultimately produce the cliff as getting "98% of what I wanted."
- The Budget Control Act passed the House with 2/3 of GOP voting yes.
To revive a tired phrase: They built it.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)were complicit in setting up this scam.
They did it by fabricating this "crisis" in the first place; validating it and the right-wing framing of how we got here, e.g. through the President's despicable speech to the nation on "pea eating"; and colluding to ensure the outcome they both sought: austerity for the 99 percent.
This entire process was deliberately rigged from the outset as a Shock Doctrine scam to ensure that the ONLY possible outcomes were austerity or slightly less draconian austerity through the debt ceiling "trigger."
No, it was not ONLY Republicans perpetrating this scam. For decades, Democrats were the only ones standing between predatory corporate policies and the American people. Now too many of them have sold out and abandoned that role, and this is what we get as a result.