Reply #70: By putting it with the tax bill then, we lost the opportunity to let Republicons OWN not doing them! [View All]

If we'd just let the Bush tax cuts expire, even if we didn't get the unemployment benefit extensions, then we could have put a lot more blame on the Republicans in the following term for NOT passing them and had one more issue to go after them with in 2012 if they didn't. I bet with push coming to shove, they'd have had to pass some extensions too or a lot of the tea partiers without unemployment would start to turn on them too.

I speak as someone who was also receiving these unemployment benefits as well, and recognize that though I've benefitted from them, that ultimately even when they were passed with these extensions added to the bill, that we were all going to pay a lot more later for having passed that bill then. It WAS a failure!

Our party leaders should have known when we did budget reconciliation that THEN was the time to also put in place our versions of what tax cuts and unemployment benefits along with the health care bill stuff (as little as we got in that bill from using budget reconciliation for that).

Bush Republicans played their cards more strategically when they passed those tax cuts initially through budget reconciliation. Too bad we can't be as good at strategy as they are, or at least not have as many complicit with those outside our party's constituents (the Turd way or DLC) that probably "avoided" these outcomes.