Fiscal cliffhanger?

The House Republicans don’t like the deal the Senate negotiated yesterday and voted on at 2:00AM this morning. Why am I not surprised?

I’m of two minds here: I don’t like this deal much either. Since we’ve now technically gone over the cliff, all the Bush tax cuts have expired, which means a ton of revenue beyond the $600B over ten years that is in yesterday’s Senate bill. Now Obama and the Democratic Senate could negotiate holding an even stronger hand, I think.

On the other hand, the unemployment compensation renewal would disappear and so would a bunch of other things, like the Medicare “doc fix,” a permanent fix to the Alternate Minimum Tax and the farm bill.

With this bunch of House Republicans nothing would have surprised me except a complete rollover and agreement with the few moderates left in that body, and that wasn’t in the cards.