Then, let’s turn around and use some of the generated revenue for job creating/preserving stimulus in the form for aid to states, infrastructure spending and aid to distressed mortgages.

Wouldn’t that go quite a ways towards ameliorating the projected recession?

And if the republicans block it, they continue to dig their own graves…

The benefit of going “off the cliff” is that we then have a new baseline, and Republicans will be put in the position of actually taking money out of the people’s pockets every day they obstruct the middle and lower class parts of these policies unless it includes the massive benefits for the 1%.

It’s very simple (assuming the Democrats hold the Senate):

1) Go off the cliff, promising all the while to return all the good stuff as the first legislative agenda item and to make it all retroactive to Jan. 1 2013.

2) Eliminate the filibuster on day one of the Senate session when adopting the rules. This prevents Republican obstructionism in the Senate.

3) Take the first House bill that comes over and replace its contents wholesale with an amendment containing all the good stuff we want to keep, retroactive to Jan 1. Pass that and dare the Republicans in the House to block it. Watch the people beat their Republican representatives to a bloddy pulp if they actually do.