Noam Scheiber of The New Republic and Conn Carroll of The Washington Examiner discuss:
Can Mitch McConnell Save Us from the Fiscal Cliff?
Posted in Politics. Tagged bloggingheads.tv, conn carroll, fiscal cliff, Mitch McConnell, noam scheiber, the good fight.
Mr Carroll’s analysis makes sense in the new Congress but not in this one — there isn’t time to break a filibuster. There’s a process laid out in the Senate rules, and it takes longer than the few days left to this Congress. So if anything is to pass before the new Congress is sworn in, McConnell will have to agree to it.
The first thing the new Senate will do, of course, is trim back the filibuster, and the paralysis of the last few weeks is a strong argument to do so. That’s what the R’s will have accomplished by their intransigence.