Obama Calls for Open Votes on Mini-Bill if Reid-McConnell Negotiations Don't Bear Fruit

Speaking just now at the White House, President Obama said Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell are still negotiating on a big package of some sort to avert the fiscal cliff. But what was more interesting was what Obama outlined as a fallback possibility if Reid and McConnell couldn't agree. In that case, he said he thought congress should enact a kind of mini-bill that would extend Bush-era income tax rates on households with AGI below $250,000 (he characterized this as avoiding a middle class tax hike, but in fact payroll taxes will go up regardless of what happens) and that extends federal Unemployment Insurance funding. Most interestingly of all he specifically delved into congressional procedure and called for up or down votes in both houses of congress on such a bill. This is an important difference. In the Senate, it's the difference between what the median senator (roughly Ben Nelson)...