Looks like I might have been wrong when I wrote about the budget deal giving the IRS even more power. Turns out, according to this article anyway, that the deal was virtually meaningless regarding income verification:
... But that demand didn't make it into the agreement signed by the president Wednesday night. Instead, the deal basically requires two submitted reports in the course of the next year. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is due to submit the first report by Jan. 1, which must detail "the procedures employed by American Health Benefit Exchanges to verify eligibility for credits and cost-sharing reductions described in subsection."...So teabaggRs got even more of nothing than I'd thought. They shut down the government, cost it billions of dollars, added to the deficits, and got nothing for it.
As well they should have.
Well, they did get that thing Ds had asked for about 21 times and Rs had refused: a special committee of congressfolk to address the budget going forward. Naturally, though, those same teabaggRs who've been whining that President Obama wouldn't negotiate as long as they held a gun to the country have stated, repeatedly, that tax increases are off the table. Those martyred and solitary holders of the flame of liberty that lights America, who said Obama doesn't negotiate in good faith, have said, in effect, that the only measures that deserve consideration are the only ones they're for: cuts. If that's good faith, if that's "negotiation," grits ain't groceries and Mona Lisa was a man.
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