think so

was doing it from memory. I'll add that. Thanks

to provide an opportunity for the politics of brinksmanship.

It's an edge that is avoided by raising the debt ceiling.

If they let the Bush tax cuts expire, and raise the debt ceiling,

the nation gets time to let the recovery grow the revenue stream.

However, my concern is if it take a while to hammer out a deal, even a month for these people will be devastating.

It's easy for middle class people to pontificate " let the tax cuts expire".. it's not just tax cuts that will expire.
I also fear that some of these cuts to poverty programs will become permanent.

This is not a really even a slope.

the Repugs want to slash spending on the poor far more than it would happen with sequester.

Everything you mentioned is correct, but I still think people underestimate the effect of the expiration of the tax cuts on low income workers.

Someone that makes $30,000/year is going to see an immediate "pay cut" of $11.54/week due to the expiration of the payroll tax holiday (which I agree should expire). In addition, FITW will impose another "pay cut" due to the reversion of the lowest bracket from 10% to 15% - a 50% increase in that bracket (up to $17,000 for married/joint filings). Even if their FITW is set correctly for their number of dependents, it could result in another "pay cut" of up to $11.54/week.

That's a few gallons of gas or a small amount of groceries, and the potential impact on these families worry me, as they need every dollar they bring home.

We don't have to worry about the UI extensions, those hostages were already killed in the deal that "saved" them, one year of extension for two years of extending the cuts. Those people have already been forgotten about and written off and the newly unemployed in a higher level of crisis than when the original extension passed, are told to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and the old 99ers we were supposed to be helping are dead as far as any effort to help them and their families, hopefully they have also found their boot straps in good working order.

Then to make another deal with the devil and creating millions of more hostages is beyond my reckoning but at the time some of those most likely to wring hands about the hostages were talking how great a deal we had snookered the TeaPubliKlans into and that the cuts would be no big deal and pretending we had the big hostage, military cuts.

Bullshit, I said let them kill the hostages when I was one because I expected more hostages would be under threat and a deal will create even more the next round without any increased benefit in exchange.

Even the dimmest bulbs cast enough light to see this pattern, or would if they would be honest rather than playing with game theory and personality cults.

And the enemy left in no doubt whatever it will happen, and that it is they who will be forced to take the blame for any adverse consequences by the public.

The things you mention which are part of the tax code can be presented in a new bill as tax cuts for working people, and the rest proposed afresh as items which, if the enemy will not vote for them, will be occasions to rouse popular fury at the Republican House for its heartless cruelty.

It is essential to break the Republican House; nothing good can be achieved unless this is done.

'Over the cliff' is the most promising strategy available to achieve this.

"There but for the grace of god*, go I"

*circumstance