Sometimes, I guess it’s that first taste of forbidden pleasure that makes a formerly chaste individual into a raging ball of hormone-driven impulses. With the Democratic Congress, it was apparently the utter lack of constituent backlash when they waived their own pay-as-you-go rules for tax cuts just in time for Christmas that has made them want to do it again and again and again. This time, they’re not even waiting for the legislation to come down to the wire or making any excuses!

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The House tonight followed the Senate’s lead and approved a tax reduction without a corresponding offset in violation of their own pay-as-you-go rules. The legislation temporarily “patches” the Alternative Minimum Tax by making in inapplicable to those who don’t already pay it. But, since there was no ability to agree on which taxes to permanently increase to offset the temporary decrease for some people, they didn’t bother. In the mean time, while they’re selling it as a “middle class” tax cut, the beneficiaries will be households that make between $75,000 and $200,000. Median income in America today is $48,200. [Yahoo News, Census Bureau]