Cast your mind back to last summer, when virtually every Left-leaning politician and columnist in the country was denouncing House Republicans for “holding the country hostage” to their Tea Party demands, or whatever. Many, including the Vice President, ramped up the rhetoric by comparing the GOP to terrorists. At stake was whether Congress would secure dollar-for-dollar offsets to President Obama latest debt ceiling increase request. Democrats — who at first insisted on a “clean” debt increase with no strings attached — eventually demanded a deal that included huge tax increases. Republicans refused. Many painful machinations and meetings later, a tax-free deal was finally struck.* (Our credit national credit was downgraded anyway because Standard & Poor’s didn’t believe our political system was prepared to deal with our crushing long term debt problem in a serious way. They were right. Since the downgrade, the responsible House-passed budget has been rejected by a Democrat-held Senate that hasn’t even attempted to pass its own budget resolution in three years, and by a president whose budget proposals have (a) been unanimously defeated, and (b) not offered any debt solutions — by the White House’s own admission). That was how our leaders approached the last fiscal cliff. With another one approaching, Democrats — to borrow their term — are engaging in some reckless hostage-taking brinksmanship of their own:
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