Damn, that was close.
Sixteen days of government shutdown. An endless sound-bite tug of war. Negotiations that had less intellectual substance than a debate over who could bench more, the Hulk or the Thing.
It's all over.
Late last night, at the 23rd hour, Congress finally hammered together a deal to jump-start the government and reset the debt limit, a move that avoids government default and puts half a million furloughed government employees back to work.
Today, get ready for a lot of warm, fuzzy post-ops on moving forward from the whole kerfuffle. But, lest we forget too quickly, let us point out that a good handful of congressional Republicans didn't have the stones to take off their Tea Party hats and do what was right for the American people yesterday.
And you, annoyed taxpayer, will be happy to know a good slice of those naysayers on yesterday's deal were from right here in the Sunshine State.
In the House, the bill squeaked through with a 285 to 144 vote. In the Senate, it was 81 to 18.
No Florida Democrat from either end of the building voted against the deal. But for all of you keeping tabs at home, below are the Florida Republicans from the House who decided, naw, fuck it, let's drive this whole thing into default and surefire economic catastrophe.
No doubt, this morning, those no votes are trying to front like this was a big win, rubbing their Koch Brothers-issued Illuminati decoder rings together in the FoxNews green room. We've included links to their websites, in case you wanted to drop a line about how much you appreciate the job performance.
For some reason, Rep. CW Bill Young didn't vote on the bill. Must of had something better going on.
Ah, and of course, over in the Senate, this guy was among the 18 to vote against the shutdown legislation:
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