Last Chance to Avoid the Fiscal Cliff

On December 27, the House and Senate members are expected to convene and continue talks over how to prevent automatic tax increases for everyone and also deep spending cuts that will be triggered in the new year without an agreement. It is now apparent that the Republican House, now in full disarray will not be able to come up with any progress without another plan from the Democratically led Senate. Still with their inability to come up with a solution on their own, the Republican led Congressional members did go home and enjoy their Christmas holiday, not taking into consideration how serious it was not getting the fiscal cliff issue resolved before Christmas. After all, if a deal is not met, the Congress won't be hurting, as those very rich Senators will not even think twice of allowing such a disaster from happening to the American people, because it just won't affect them. I am totally convinced now that the Congress just doesn't care. Every American will feel a paycheck decrease, take-home pay that will be cut automatically by 2% starting January 1, 2013, the effect of raised taxes. The U.S. Credit rating now stands a chance of being lowered again. The main dispute continues to be over taxes, specifically the demand by Obama and Democrats to extend most of the tax cuts passed under President George W. Bush while allowing higher rates of the 1990's to return on top income brackets.
Something that I don't believe has ever been seen before, the House Speaker John Boehner in an attempt to compromise with the Democrats, realized that he did not have the support from his own colleagues in the process, and suffered what is said to be political indignity. Many hard right wingers are now calling for Boehner's resignation, saying that he is too far to the left of where he needs to be for his own party. Still, he was overwhelmingly supported by his fellow Senators to continue in his present job as Speaker of the House. When Nancy Pelosi was the Speaker of the past Democratically controlled House, she always had her fellow Senators in check, and knew exactly how the vote would turn out, and would never even attempt to have a vote if she didn't know what the outcome would be with a great amount of certainty. But John Boehner does not have the backing now of his fellow Republican Senators, and he is not able to predict even what his own party will do in the House. The bill that he supported never made it to the Senate because he knew that he could not drum up enough support from his own House Republicans to pass the bill along to the Senate, even though he sincerely thought he would be able to provide a House supported bill to Congress for their vote.
Now instead of leading the way, the Republican Senators in the House will depend on the Democratically controlled Senate to come up with a bill that they can support. But there is a catch. The Democrats will not present such a bill unless the Republicans also support it this time around.  A cat and mouse game continues to play out in Congress.
The Republican party, especially the Senators in the House are sincerely not capable of creating laws on their own without causing grief to others. Why do the American people continue to support such people? It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway, that time is running out for the dysfunctional Republicans, and they all chance the possibility in loosing their jobs in 2014 when they must run again to keep their jobs.