A Tea Party Anniversary To Remember
I mean really, how totally and perfectly appropriate that on the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, tax-and-spender Majority Leader Harry Reid was forced late Thursday night to kill his pork-laden, $1.2 trillion omnibus spending bill on the floor of the Senate.
An added bonus: along with nearly $8 billion worth of earmarks tucked into the now dead atrocity of a bill, it also included continued funding for Obamacare.
Reid professed that he had nine Republican senators tell him earlier Thursday that while they would’ve liked to seen the spending bill approved, they could not vote for it. Hmmmm. Wonder why?
Message delivered Nov. 2. Message received Dec. 16.
The quote Thursday from Sen. John McCain: “I know this is a seminal moment, because for the first time since I’ve been here, we stood up and said ‘enough.’”
This from CNN:
Reid, D-Nevada, accused Republicans of withdrawing previously pledged support for the bill, and said he would work with the Senate Republican leader to draft a short-term spending measure that would keep the government running beyond Saturday, when the current spending authorization resolution expires.
“A number of Republican senators told me they’d like to see this pass, but they can’t support it,” Reid said, adding that nine GOP senators who previously told him they backed the bill had changed their stance.
The shift announced by Reid culminated a Republican effort to kill the spending bill and likely put off major spending decisions for the rest of fiscal year 2011 until a more conservative Congress convenes in January.
While the Senate saw the omnibus porker go down in flames, the House late Thursday night gave final approval to a much-wrangled tax deal. This from The Washington Post:
The package, brokered by President Obama and Republican leaders in the wake of the November elections, angered many Democrats, who have long argued that the Bush tax cuts were skewed to benefit the wealthy. But their last-minute campaign to scale back the bill’s benefits for taxpayers at the highest income levels failed, and the House passed the measure 277 to 148, with 112 Democrats and 36 Republicans voting “no.”
…
The $858 billion package now goes to the White House. With his signature, expected as soon as Friday, Obama will prevent taxes from rising on New Year’s Day for virtually every American household. The measure also will guarantee unemployed workers in hard-hit states up to 99 weeks of jobless benefits through the end of next year. And it will create major new incentives for business and consumer spending in 2011, including a two-percentage-point reduction in the Social Security payroll tax that would let workers keep as much as $2,136.
While not a total victory – the so-called tax compromise adds enough red to the balance sheet to be considered Stimulus Redux – why ruin the moment.
All in all, not a bad day to celebrate a Tea Party Anniversary.
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