It's a new day. It's a new year. Yet, we wake to find that we are still in the same quagmire we thought we had managed to pull ourselves out of as many of us put our New Year's Eve parties to rest and went to bed.
The US Senate by a vote of 89-8 passed a compromise bill around 2 a.m. to rectify and stop the tumble after the nation fell over the edge of a fiscal abyss at 12:01 a.m. Many of us held out hope that the bill with such an overwhelming majority would be enough to convince the US House of Representives to take a vote for or against the deal worked out by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Vice President Joe Biden.
Not so fast, it seems, Republican members of the House are saying. Even House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has come out against the compromise. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, according to Democratic members' aides, can't corral her entire caucus either to support the measure. All that would be needed if Democrats voted in bloc would be 27 Republican votes, but the aides say to pass the bill at least 50 GOP members must vote aye. This indicates that Pelosi has at least 23 Democratic Representatives who won't back it even though the Vice President tried to sell the deal.
Complicating matters, Senators, after approving the compromise legislation, shut down and left town. That means if the House passes the bill with amendments or changes, nothing will happen until the Senate comes back to town. That means waiting around until Thursday, three days after going over the fiscal cliff. Compounding it all is that the new Congress also starts that day, which the make-up will not be the same in either chamber and those new members may not be inclinded to act on this deal.
Yes, it may be a new day and a new year, but thanks to the way Americans voted in November we are stuck in the muck which we created.
From the Cornfield, we, the voters, have to accept some of the blame for what is happening. We are the ones who voted the way we did with hopes that elected officials would understand we wanted them to work together. Apparently neither Democrats nor Republicans got the message.
Will they do the right thing for the nation within the next 24, 48 or 72 hours?
We can only keep our fingers crossed and make sure we let our members of both chambers of Congress know what we think and feel about this mess.