Visual Source: Newseum
Dan Balz:
Even before Boehner’s Saturday decision, some Republicans said Obama had handled the negotiations in a way that, no matter the outcome, would help him politically. By putting cuts in entitlements into the discussion, Obama had moved himself closer to the center and demonstrated to political independents that, above all, he is trying to bring the two parties together to solve big problems.
Now that Boehner has walked away, say Democratic strategists, the president can argue that Republicans bowed to their tea party activists and let political orthodoxy about taxes stand in the way of a historic agreement. Republicans will argue the opposite, saying that it was the president’s commitment to more taxes, which they believe the public opposes, made a deal impossible.
phillyburbs.com:
Poll after poll shows that the American people want higher taxes. That’s not the same as liking higher taxes. The people have simply concluded that higher taxes are preferable to the alternative, so vividly portrayed in the Republican plan to do away with government guarantees in Medicare.
NY Times:
Privately, some in Congress expressed regret at Mr. Boehner’s decision on Saturday to walk away from an agreement that they said would have been a rare opportunity for Republicans and Democrats to radically restructure the government’s finances, rewrite the tax code and fix longstanding problems with Medicare and Medicaid.
In the end, officials briefed on the talks said, ideological differences over a tax overhaul bogged down the bigger agreement. Mr. Boehner, they said, was open to letting Bush-era tax cuts for wealthy people expire, while maintaining the cuts for middle-income wage-earners. But Democrats briefed on the talks said he made that contingent on rewriting the tax code by the end of this year, so that the loss of the cuts would be offset by lower overall tax rates.
The White House, officials said, was willing to put a deadline on a tax overhaul. But it rejected Mr. Boehner’s formula, arguing that it would place too much of a burden on the middle class while protecting the rich.
When Republicans say they are trying to reduce the deficit, they are bullshitting. It was true when they weren't in power, and it's true now that they are. What's also true is that it's now crystal clear to everyone, and they have nothing to hide behind.
Would the Grand Bargain have been acceptable politically? There would have been a lot of pain and frustration on all sides, not least from the Democrats, but now we'll never know.
Default is off the table, it won't happen. But GOP extremism that hurts this country is a daily occurrence, whether it's MN or WI or DC.
Now can we talk about jobs?
NY Times:
In some ways, this boils down to math, both economic and political. Yes, 9.2 percent of the American work force is unemployed — but 90.8 percent of it is working. To elected officials, the unemployed are a relatively small constituency. And with apologies to Karl Marx, the workers of the world, particularly the unemployed, are also no longer uniting.
Nor are they voting — or at least not as much as people with jobs. In 2010, some 46 percent of working Americans who were eligible to vote did so, compared with 35 percent of the unemployed, according to Michael McDonald, a political scientist at George Mason University. There was a similar turnout gap in the 2008 election.
No wonder policy makers don’t fear unemployed Americans. The jobless are, politically speaking, more or less invisible.
Paul Krugman:
Turn on your TV and you’ll see some self-satisfied pundit declaring that nothing much can be done about the economy’s short-run problems (reminder: this “short run” is now in its fourth year), that we should focus on the long run instead.
This gets things exactly wrong. The truth is that creating jobs in a depressed economy is something government could and should be doing. Yes, there are huge political obstacles to action — notably, the fact that the House is controlled by a party that benefits from the economy’s weakness. But political gridlock should not be conflated with economic reality.
More discussion in
bobswern's diary.
EJ Dionne:
The unseemly love affair some American politicians have with the death penalty is bad for justice and bad for our country’s standing in the world. It inflicts a wholly unnecessary moral stain on a nation that rightly preaches the rule of law to everyone else.
Even more remarkable is the indifference that five Supreme Court justices have shown to such considerations.