In it, but not of it. TPM DC  The Dysfunctional Origins Of The
Fiscal Cliff Fiasco   The blundering and ad hoc legislating
which lead to Tuesday night's denouement actually began at the
end of the 111th Congress, when, after a bruising midterm
election defeat, President Obama agreed to extend all of the
expiring Bush tax cuts for two years. In exchange, Republicans
agreed to economic stimulus measures -- a payroll tax cut,
emergency unemployment benefits -- without which Obama might
have been defeated in 2012, but which themselves became wedges
of the fiscal cliff itself.  That agreement was announced just
before Republicans took over the House of Representatives and by
no coincidence it was the least clumsy chapter in the fiscal
cliff saga. But it was the precursor to the serial brinksmanship
that defined the 112th Congress: the government shutdown fights;
the disaster relief debacles; the payroll tax cut drama; and,
above all, the struggle to raise the national debt limit.  The
sad legacy of the debt limit