Senate Passes Fiscal Cliff Bill Hiking Taxes And Not Cutting ANY Spending

It’s official. Today, January 1st, 2013, the Senate just finished passing a bill that “averts the fiscal cliff”.  This post was at first to be a letter to Republicans in the House of Representatives  However, with the passing of the Senate bill, it seems to me that this article needs to be written.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV)

It seems like a victory for the nation, right? It seems as though the Senate has passed a bill to save us all! However, the bill breaks every Republican demand in this debate. The Senate bill does extend the current tax rate (commonly referred to as the Bush Tax Cuts) for people who make less than $450,000. However, that goes against every Republican demand and the tax pledge. The pledge says that a Republican will never, ever vote raise taxes on anyone, period  Tonight, the only people who voted against the measure were Carper D-DE, Harkin D-IA, Bennet D-CO, Lee R-UT, Paul R-KY, Rubio R-FL, Shelby R-AL and Grassley R-IA. The rest of the Senate (including the other Republicans) voted for the measure. Essentially, the other Republicans just voted away the one thing a Republican can always say, “I will never vote to raise taxes”.  The Senate bill also fails to cut spending, at all!  The bill only delays for two months the  across-the-board spending cuts which will come from defense and domestic programs.  However, didn’t Republicans said that in order to even consider raising taxes (which they shouldn’t) Democrats had to cut spending? Yet, Senate Republicans just voted for a bill with no spending cuts and that raises taxes. Basically, Senate Republicans (with the exception of  Lee, Paul, Shelby, Rubio, and Grassley) just passed EVERYTHING the Democrats wanted. There was nothing in the bill that Republicans supported except making sure taxes were the same for the middle class which we something agreed upon already.

Senate Republicans (with the exceptions) have failed us.  It’s up to the House of Representatives to be our last stand.

Here are the pictures of the Senators who voted against the bill: