Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise, who is set to become the chair of the House Study Committee (replacing Rep. Jim Jordan), has an interview up at the Financial Times declaring he'd rather fly off the fiscal cliff than cut a deal. Or, as he put it, “A bad deal would be worse than no deal at all." Scalise goes on to claim a mandate from the people:
He argues that Republicans were given a mandate by voters when they held on to their majority in the House in November’s election, and that a majority of people support budget proposals to cut government spending sharply and reform popular government programmes such as Medicare.
“[The election] has proven to us one thing: we are it. In the House we are the last line of defence and we need to act like it. We need to hold the line. And there is no cavalry . . . we have to fight for it everyday,” he said.
But, of course, Republicans didn't win a "majority" of voters. Gerrymandering is fine by me, but House Democrats received over a million more votes than Republicans in last month's election. And for the love of all that is good, please don't play chicken with America's economy.