It's time for a reality check ...

Harry Reid …

In the pantheon of BS artists, Harry Reid is at or near the top.  Only Nancy Pelosi – another top- shelf BS artist – comes close. 

The difference is that Nancy’s crazy and doesn’t know it.  Harry’s disingenuous and hypocritical, and does know it. 

He’s also one of those rare people whose remarks look better in print than on video clips.  In print, he seems bold and aggressive; in video clips he looks like a wispy ghost and sounds like an agitated, whining old man. 

He’s clearly a dim-witted little weasel prone to saying stupid things – such as that he knew that Mitt Romney hadn’t paid any taxes in 10 years – and other crackpot nonsense, yet the media treats him like a respected, noble statesman.  Given his persona, and his propensity for spouting silliness, it’s hard to see how the media could take him seriously.   But they do.   

In case you didn’t know, Harry – this erstwhile noble statesman – happens to be the Senate Majority Leader who single-handedly has prevented almost every House bill from coming up for a vote in the Senate.  Under his leadership – if you can call it that – the Senate also hasn’t passed a budget in almost four years.  Nor are they likely to, as long as he’s in charge. 

Yet he routinely accuses House Republicans of being obstructionists – which might be the height of hypocrisy given his record.  And yesterday, he called Boehner’s management of the House a ”dictatorship” – another incredibly hypocritical statement.  He claimed Boehner refused to bring up the Senate’s bill on the Bush-era tax cuts because if House members had a chance, they’d approve the Senate bill.  Meanwhile, he won’t let the House bill passed in August come to the floor of the Senate, probably because he fears it might pass there. 

It’s simply amazing that whatever the Democrats in the White House and Senate want is apparently good, while anything the Republican House wants is beneath contempt.  As Harry said a while ago, anything from the House is DOA in the Senate.

That’s statesmanship at its finest.  Really?

The media spin is predictable.  Once again the Democrats and Obama are trying as hard as they can to get things done – and save us all from rising taxes – while the Republican-controlled House blocks everything the Senate and Obama propose on our behalf.   And when we lurch over the fiscal cliff, it will be entirely because of obstructionist Republicans who are pandering to the rich at the expense of the poor and middle class. 

There are a couple of problems with that.   

The Democrats and Obama are the ones holding things up.   There are a lot of legislative tools they could use to buy time.  However, it's clear they don’t want to compromise at all, even though it would seem that the two sides aren’t that far apart.   

The bill passed by the Senate in July raises taxes on the wealthy (HHI over $250,000), lets the estate tax rise, and extends and expands some tax credits.  And, of course, has no spending cuts, which is what the House is clamoring for.   The bill the House passed in August is not that much different, except that the House bill would extend the Bush-era tax cuts for just about everyone, keep estate taxes where they are and close loopholes and limit deductions for the ultra-rich, instead of raising their tax rates.  Revenue goals are about the same; details differ.        

But the House also passed a bill to limit some of the harshest budget cuts that would happen through the sequestration process.  That’s something the Senate didn’t do. 

The net/net is that the House bills would increase revenue to roughly the same level as Obama’s plan to raise tax rates on the rich, and gently cut spending.  Together, both House bills would appear to be sure-fire winners even to Democrats in the Senate, accustomed as they are to making sure almost nobody feels any pain from anything anymore. 

But Harry won’t bring the House bills to the Senate floor.  Nor is he willing to engage in any dialogue on coming up with a compromise version.  Republicans in the House have said they’d be willing to compromise more on the tax cuts for the wealthy and other items, but would like some commitments on spending cuts in return. 

So there would seem to be room for reasonable compromise.  Not with Harry – the spokespuppet for Obama – who has ruled out any rational give and take.    

With Harry in charge, and Obama pulling the strings, a compromise is not going to happen, and neither of them apparently wants one.  Harry and Obama know that a great way of ensuring a stalemate, and diminishing any hope of compromise, is to demonize the people with whom you need to reach agreement.  That’s his strategy.  Obama’s as well.   They are both doing their best to make sure no agreement is reached.     

Honestly, I believe Harry and Obama want us to go over the cliff.  Harry, because he’s in a snit; Obama because he wants to pound the Republicans at any cost.  Seriously, they are eager to have everybody’s taxes go up, and widespread budget cuts to happen, while they keep their hands clean of it all.  That’s the reason for all the posturing about the Republicans being intransigent and as such being solely responsible for taking the country over the cliff.   

That’s not to say the Republicans are totally blameless.  Letting the House shut down while this is going on appears petty and churlish.  Going tit for tat on accusations with Harry is childish.  And Boehner has stepped in it a few times by trying to whip his caucus in line and failing, which makes him look weak to the Democrats. 

With all the Republican dithering, they’ve also allowed Harry and Obama to reframe the argument.  It’s no longer how best to balance the budget though cuts in spending while increasing revenues.  Harry and Obama have successfully recast it as something resembling class warfare – a battleground more familiar and favorable to Democrats – where the rich need to pay more so the poor and middle class don’t have to.    

Harry is not the only reason we’re headed over the cliff.  He is part of the reason, but he’s just a self-righteous little toady, without the backbone to do the right thing. 

The right thing is to either pass the House bill in the Senate now and amend it later, or pass something to extend the deadline while the House and Senate bills go to conference committee to hammer out compromise legislation.  Harry knows that how it’s supposed to work. All tax legislation has to originate in the House, under the Constitution; the Senate cannot initiate tax legislation.  The Senate can make wholesale changes to a House tax bill, or reject it outright, but it can't simply create its own bill and expect the House to pass it.  That’s the way legislation gets finalized and passed, and has been for generations.  

Maybe he knows it’s all a waste of time.  Obama’s already said that he will veto the House bills.

Meanwhile Harry is doing his best to keep up the attacks on Boehner and House Republicans to ensure that there’s no compromise.  And when all Hell breaks loose on January 1, Republicans get all the blame.

Nice job, Harry.  Real statesmanship at work.