republicans get what they wanted a while ago and end up unhappy about it. democrats get spit on. a 'bipartisan' commission will be created to destroy entitlements and the middle class.

EVERYONE WINS!!

Don't get ahead of yourself, Obama still has a veto.

he brokered it. i doubt he'll veto...

the great capitulator in chief

Don't think I'm voting in the next election

Waiting for the House to actually pass the fucking thing before I get excited

This is setting up interesting for '12 though. You're going to have to ask the American people to make a choice between tax increases (and not just on the wealthy) and serious cuts in entitlement spending. Following the election, Congress will deal with extending the expiring Bush tax cuts. That will be an interesting battle.

i don't think they should, but i really hope they extend the SS tax "holiday" through 2012

Yet more proof that there is no left in this country anymore, at least not in the government. The unbalanced march to the right continues. Should be fun when all the safety nets are gone.... dog food, anyone?

and then there's the clean air, water, food, and drugs.

This thing might not pass. One GOP senator has already said he's going to filibuster it(Lee), and it might not get enough support in the house from either side.

Just a bad situation all around. The outcome was going to be terrible no matter what. Only now we get fucked slowly instead of quickly.

It'll pass. There will be enough D votes to make up for Teapartiers not pleased with the deal. You'll have a decent chunk from both sides that won't vote for it to protect themselves in the next election, but not enough to stop it.

TV, the other thing that's going to get thrown into the mix is defense spending. I think that might get hammered too.

Obama really blew it here. Still has my vote anyway. The thought of President Perry or President Bachmann is too much to keep me from the voting booth.

I'm still hung up on the either-or penalty hanging over the joint congressional committee.

I am looking forward to the tea party head-spinning when Grover Norquist comes out in opposition to anything like the BBA, saying something like "the most important thing isn’t to balance the budget; it’s to slash spending."

cshort wrote:It'll pass. There will be enough D votes to make up for Teapartiers not pleased with the deal. You'll have a decent chunk from both sides that won't vote for it to protect themselves in the next election, but not enough to stop it.

TV, the other thing that's going to get thrown into the mix is defense spending. I think that might get hammered too.

maybe they think it sucks and is pointless. is it all always politics and posturing?

and why would the only useful spending cuts get 'hammered'?

Didn't mean just defense spending getting hammered. Entitlement programs will get "hammered" too. Probably a poor choice of words relative to the original comment. To phrase it another way, there will be quite a bit of debate about defense spending as well, and there should be.

As I stated before, if they want to do this right, cut defense, cut entitlements (means testing, changing retirement age,...), let at least some of the Bush tax cuts expire, and remove tax breaks and subsidies for things like oil and ethanol. It'll never happen, but I like to dream.

cshort wrote:Didn't mean just defense spending getting hammered. Entitlement programs will get "hammered" too. Probably a poor choice of words relative to the original comment. To phrase it another way, there will be quite a bit of debate about defense spending as well, and there should be.

As I stated before, if they want to do this right, cut defense, cut entitlements (means testing, changing retirement age,...), let at least some of the Bush tax cuts expire, and remove tax breaks and subsidies for things like oil and ethanol. It'll never happen, but I like to dream.

republicans on the committee are hemmed in by 2 things:

1) Grover Norquist
2) the 'nuclear' defense cut final solution in the event of a stalemate

they can't agree to any REAL revenue raising, and won't readily swallow sufficient defense cuts in negotiations. The BBA option is the tea partiests' worst nightmare, they're just too ignorant to realize it.

who among them will consent to being on the committee? And on the other side, you want to be sure to have at least one tea-party-amenable member on board.

The selection process should be entertaining. Listening to the tea partiers howl will be occasionally fun, but mostly annoying.

I wish I could not pay attention to any of this.

The reason one doesn't make deals with hostage-takers is because it creates an incentive for more hostage-taking. I get why the administration basically transgressed everything it claims to care about to appease one faction in one half of one branch of government (which, ironically, happens to be fundamentally impossible to appease; I'm not at all sure this will get through the House); they're basically responsible in governance, and politically they figured the president will be the biggest loser when the economy slides back into recession. But given that the guy has shown no spine on anything, why won't the right-wing jihadists try this again? And in terms of the electorate rewarding responsibility, if that were true, Bachmann--someone with about as much business being president as Jack Van Impe--wouldn't be polling at 20 percent among Republicans.

I was a huge Obama supporter in 2007-2008. I know a bit about political science, for instance that incumbent presidents who face strong primary challenges pretty much always lose. (This is correlation, of course, not causality.) I don't even think of myself as particularly left-leaning anymore.

But I find myself hoping Obama gets primaried. Our politics are terribly out of balance, and there needs to be some force that pulls us back from drifting off the road to the right.

dajafi wrote:But I find myself hoping Obama gets primaried. Our politics are terribly out of balance, and there needs to be some force that pulls us back from drifting off the road to the right.

But Huntsman's already chosen a side, and Bernie Sanders is a little long in the tooth

bernie's not a democrat so he can't...but feingold could.

dajafi wrote:But I find myself hoping Obama gets primaried. Our politics are terribly out of balance, and there needs to be some force that pulls us back from drifting off the road to the right.

But if Obama loses, it will be to someone more right-wing, pushing us further in that direction - not less.