Angsty House GOP Ends Year In Favor of Higher Taxes, To Be Emo

Well, this makes sense: John Boehner announced that House Republicans expect to vote down tonight a two-month payroll tax cut extension that passed 89-10 in the Senate, presumably to round out the year in teabagger obstructionism with a full-circle reversal of the defining GOP platform for the last million years, "not raising taxes." Nobody even seems to know why they are having a petulant adolescent fit over the bill other than that mean Dad Barack Obama likes it, forcing John Boehner to just wing an official objection on the grounds that the extension lasts only two months instead of, uh, twelve, and twelve is a higher number.

Even as recently as Saturday John Boehner was all, "sure, whatever, I've got a golf game to get to" before Eric Cantor's incurable case of the whines decided to flare up again, like herpes. FEEL ERIC CANTOR'S PAIN, AMERICA.

From the  NYT:   

The once-seemingly sure deal, which allowed the Senate to recess for the year, was for a $33 billion package of bills to keep the Social Security tax paid by most workers at 4.2 percent rather than 6.2 percent, extend unemployment benefits for those already receiving them, and avoid reductions in Medicare payments to doctors. The measure would be effective through February.

But the deal slid off the rails abruptly on Saturday, just hours after the Senate vote, when House Republicans balked after being briefed about the terms by their leaders. Even a sweetener provision to speed the decision process for construction of an oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast could not mollify them. Mr. Boehner had called the provision a “victory.”

So in a matter of hours, a hastily written agreement between Senate leaders — one Mr. McConnell said Saturday on the Senate floor was “not designed to fail but designed to pass” — gave way to chaos.

Oh well, democracy was kind of fun while it lasted, in America. [ NYT / Politico ]