NPR:
Congress just might give the nation a reprieve on the fiscal drama for all of 2016. House and Senate leadership, together with the president, have agreed on a two-year spending deal, and they have also agreed to put off a debt-ceiling fight until March 2017.
If it passes, it would mean no more fears of defaults or shutdowns for a while, but it's ultimately a short-term fix. The new budget is more of a political victory than a fiscal one, leaving many of the nation's underlying budgetary problems in place.
NY Times adds who won:
Obama Wins on Budget Deal, Just by Keeping the Lights On
Conservative
Philip Klein looks at who lost:
This budget deal is what GOP surrender looks like
I don't know about the deal, but I like the headlines.
BTW, figure Rand Paul to filibuster and perhaps Ted Cruz. God knows what Rubio will do. Anyone running for president on the Republican side is required by the base to be nuts.
More policy and politics below the fold.
WaPo:
Donald Trump to Iowa: ‘What the hell are you people doing to me?
Sun Sentinal:
Marco Rubio should resign, not rip us off
Added, because some readers are having trouble with that url:
If you hate your job, senator, follow the honorable lead of House Speaker John Boehner and resign it.
Let us elect someone who wants to be there and earn an honest dollar for an honest day's work. Don't leave us without one of our two representatives in the Senate for the next 15 months or so.
You are paid $174,000 per year to represent us, to fight for us, to solve our problems. Plus you take a $10,000 federal subsidy — declined by some in the Senate — to participate in one of the Obamacare health plans, though you are a big critic of Obamacare.
You are ripping us off, senator.
NY Times:
Gov. John Kasich of Ohio shed his nice-guy image on Tuesday, lamenting the decline of the conservative movement and accusing his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination of peddling “crazy” ideas.
At a rally in Ohio, Mr. Kasich, a popular governor known for his moderate views, unloaded on his opponents.
“Let me tell you something,” Mr. Kasich said, his anger boiling over. “I’ve about had it with these people.”
Mr. Kasich went on to argue that Republicans who proposed abolishing Medicaid and Medicare, imposing a 10 percent flat tax, or deporting millions of people were out of touch with reality. Without mentioning anyone by name, Mr. Kasich appeared to be taking aim at Ben Carson and Donald J. Trump, the outsider candidates who have been dominating national and state polls for months.
“We’re gonna pick them up and we’re gonna take them to the border and scream at them to get out of our country,” he said, referring to Mr. Trump’s plan to build a wall along the Mexican border and remove immigrants who entered the United States illegally. “Well that’s just crazy.”
Al Hunt:
Here's a not-that-far-fetched scenario for this crazy-quilt political season: The Republican Party, which has a huge problem with Hispanic voters, would have to pick one of two young Cuban-Americans, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, as its presidential nominee.
Many smart Republican strategists and politicians say -- as they have for months -- that the current front-runners, Donald Trump and Ben Carson, ultimately will fade, and that former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, once a prohibitive favorite, won't be able to revive his slumping campaign.
As Republicans prepare for their third presidential debate Wednesday, there is increasing chatter about an eventual contest between Senators Rubio of Florida and Cruz of Texas.
Sure. Some of that chatter is from me.
Chris Cillizza:
FACT: Ted Cruz is running the best campaign of any presidential candidate
Jill Lawrence on economic substance:
The GOP's fealty to supply-side economics should be put to the test during its latest debate.
To be fair, neither party is showing much fresh thinking about any of this. One problem for Republicans, however, is that the Democratic rut is more appealing to voters. Don't take it from me, take it from a conservative analyst. "The Republican presidential candidates have not built their campaigns on offering conservative ideas that would give any direct help to families trying to make ends meet. Their tax-cut proposals are almost all focused on people who make much more than the average voter," Ramesh Ponnuru wrote in a National Review article predicting Hillary Clinton would win the White House.
He's right. A family with strained finances is going to be very interested in the Bernie Sanders plan for free college or the Clinton and Martin O'Malley plans for debt-free college. Calls for a higher minimum wage will sound appealing even to people who make more. Requiring businesses to offer paid family leave for new parents is also a crowd-pleaser, and especially awkward for the GOP to oppose in light of House speaker-in-waiting Paul Ryan saying he won't sacrifice family time for the job.
The traditional Democratic proposals have the additional advantage of not having failed to deliver. Republicans, by contrast, still embrace the supply-side fantasy that pampering the rich by slashing their taxes, particularly on unearned income like dividends, interest and inheritances, will somehow trickle down into a job and wage boom that benefits everyone. Yet a rising tide has not lifted all boats, as Ronald Reagan claimed it would, nor has a rising tide of federal revenue made up for lost tax payments.
Combine that with the pledge almost every GOP presidential candidate has signed to never raise net taxes, and proposals from many to kill departments and cap benefit programs, and the party vision is unmistakable: a crimped, cramped federal government with reduced ambitions and capacities. In other words, Kansas – the petri dish of tax-cut purism and, of late, panic over how to fund government services as basic as education. Not surprisingly, Gov. Sam Brownback has an 18 percent satisfaction rating in a new poll, and 61 percent call his tax policies either a failure or a tremendous failure.
Since this is a pundit roundup, and the
National Journal pundits are scattering,
here's where they are going.
Following Iowa? Here's a Dem perspective (s/p JJ dinner) from John Deeth:
The flip side, of course, is Team Hillary needs to be planning ahead. Sure, Bernie's folks will eventually need to get on board. But Clinton needs to get them on board, which is a tricky task.
The John Kerry campaign never really seemed to make an effort to get the Deaniacs on board; it was just assumed we would go along to Beat Bush. And while we pretty much all VOTED for Kerry - the Nader vote dwindled to a tenth of its 2000 share - a lot of folks did nothing BUT vote. And Clinton may have work to do to get even that.
She's carefully not attacking, which may not be helping but at least isn't deepening the wound. Positions on issues aren't doing it, because Sanders just keeps saying he was right on DOMA or the Iraq War or whatever FIRST. For now, she's carefully aiming at the left of the general electorate, embracing the median of the Obama era Democratic Party where it's understood that the white male South is gone forever.
Over my 25ish years in politics, I've seen literally dozens of campaigns, local and national, center their strategy around getting non-voters to vote. Only two have ever succeeded: Barack Obama, and the first 19 Bar campaign here in Iowa City in 2007 that got students out for a city election. (The second effort, in 2010, also successfully implemented the strategy, but fell just short.)
Sanders is trying that strategy, and while I wish him well, in the new zero-sum dynamic of the Democratic race, he also need to convince some of the kinds of folks who care about control of the state Senate, folks who are largely in the Clinton camp now, that he can be a team player. Because having a Democratic president didn't do jack for the teachers and public employees of Wisconsin.
Brian Stelter:
The August murders of two Virginia journalists shocked the country, in part because viewers saw the shootings happen on live television. What viewers couldn't see was the extraordinary response at the TV station WDBJ, from the editing room where a friend of one of the victims spotted the killer on videotape to the meeting room where the whole staff recited the Lord's Prayer together.