Among others, but it's not the first time GOP leaders have put upper class tax cuts ahead of 911 first responders, and if they got away with it then why wouldn't they try again? Meanwhile, how increasingly stupid does Reid look? He actually tried to make the tax cuts a DEMOCRATIC campaign issue two months before the election, then failed to get a bill passed prior to that election, which he excused on the grounds that it would be better to do it in December rather than have the election muddy the water. And now he may not even be able to pass it in December? I hope for all our sakes that the GOP is just playing rhetorical games with their "no cloture until we extend the tax cuts" (what if they expire at the end of the month, no cloture for two years? Oh, right, that's the plan anyway. ) Doesn't sound that way from the Reid quotes here, but maybe he's decided he's so inept that he needs to set the bar as low as possible. For the record, your proposed new tax bracket is an acceptable compromise in my book, though it reduces the potential benefit (OTOH, with a respectable corporate income tax I'd be OK with reducing a lot of upper class personal income taxes).

START is just the tip of the iceberg though; the specific issue you raise there is shameful (you'll postpone ratifying a NUCLEAR ARMS TREATY to score political points?!!! ) but it does highlight the problem: The guys who won big in the midterms are convinced there's nothing wrong with America that deporting all the Dems won't fix overnight. The recession, Al Qaeda and athletes foot are all caused by government action, and will magically disappear the moment it does (you betcha!) Thus pretty much anything can be put on hold indefinitely for the sake of sticking a thumb in Democratic eyes. Remember, divided government is good because it produces that panacea known as "gridlock".