Good, Bad, Ugly

Bet Your Sweet Ass Levin "The Republicans are trying to repeal the second half of the 20th century" - Rep. Sander Levin, D-Michigan.

“ Defying a veto threat, the Republican-controlled House voted Tuesday night to slice federal spending by $6 trillion and require a constitutional balanced budget amendment to be sent to the states in exchange for averting a threatened Aug. 2 government default. The 234-190 vote marked the power of deeply conservative first-term Republicans, and it stood in contrast to calls at the White House and in the Senate for a late stab at bipartisanship to solve the nation's looming debt crisis. [Huge deficit-cutting bill sails through GOP House] ”

I applaud the House,  but not the plan to raise the debt limit which is key as far as I'm concerned.  If the debt limit is raised, everything else is the same-old lipstick on a pig.  To that end I snipped these take-aways from the article; so smarmy and unctuous that I kept slipping off my chair.   “ — Yet there were signs that with Tuesday night's vote behind them, House Republican leaders might pivot swiftly. Even before the vote, Speaker John Boehner told reporters that it also was "responsible to look at what Plan B would look like."And House Majority Leader Eric Cantor issued a statement saying of the Gang of Six proposal: "This bipartisan plan does seem to include some constructive ideas to deal with our debt. — Boehner played a muted role in public during the day. He did not speak on the House floor on the legislation ... He did not discuss what alternatives he had in mind, although the Senate's top two leaders have been at work on one that would let the president raise the debt limit without prior approval by Congress. — The [Gang of six] tax overhaul "must be estimated to provide $1 trillion in additional revenue [tax increase] to meet plan targets," according to a summary that circulated in the Capitol.Some [Senate] Republicans noted a claim contained in the summary that congressional bookkeeping rules could actually consider the plan a tax cut of $1.5 trillion. That credits sponsors for retaining income tax cuts enacted at all income levels when George W. Bush was president. — Even so, in the hours after the Gang of Six¹ briefed other lawmakers on their plan, at least one member of the Republican Senate leadership, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, signed on as a supporter. So, too, did Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. ¹ -  Gang of six = three Democrats, Sens. Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Mark Warner of Virginia and Dick Durbin of Illinois, and three Republicans, all conservatives [CINOs], are Sens. Mike Crapo of Idaho, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, ”