The GOP House chose not to vote on Rep. Boehner’s “Plan B” proposal tonight, choosing instead to leave for the holidays with no solution to the fiscal cliff.
Watching a bit of each channel tonight I turned on FOX long enough to watch Sean Hannity, gleeful that the country is now on the verge of going over the fiscal cliff, saying: [sic]”we need to punish American voters for their decision in November”.
In the next hour Newt Gingrich is on, smiling and laughing.
Are they serious? Is it truly the strategy – as much as a party with a speaker who cannot get his own members to even vote on their own bill – to “punish” American voters for exercising their franchise, by turning a 3% Q1 2013 economic growth into a 3.9% economic contraction (as per the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office)?
Consider this a flabergastedly Open Thread.
The dramatic twist threw into disarray attempts to head off $600 billion worth of indiscriminate tax hikes and spending cuts that could push the U.S. economy into recession next year.
It also cast doubt over Boehner’s future as speaker after failing to control unruly conservatives in his caucus.
With only 11 days left for bickering politicians to prevent automatic tax hikes and spending cuts, U.S. stock futures fell sharply on the news of the rebuke to Boehner.
…
S&P 500 stock futures fell 1.6 percent while Dow Jones stock futures and Nasdaq futures both lost 1.5 percent. At one point S&P 500 e-mini futures were down as much as 3.6 percent.
6 comments