Lost in this "discussion" about the Obama debt ceiling "capitulation" is the contours of a grand bargain that Obama has created out of thin air. As I have long argued Obama plays the long game, especially when he sees he can't win the short game.
What if I we're to tell you a few weeks ago that the grand bargain agreement reached between Obama and Boehner was as follows:
Allow the Bush Tax Cuts to expire, make $500 billion in defense cuts and cut two percent for Medicare "providers" not beneficiaries while making sure programs for the poor and for veterans and Social Security and Medicaid are all cordoned off.
Well as of right now that is the Grand Bargain agreed upon because all of the cuts in the trigger are "sequestered" cuts that won't take effect until Jan 1, 2013, the same time the Bush tax cuts are scheduled to expire. So unless you think this bi-partison committee is actually going to agree on something your looking at the grand bargain and it doesn't look that bad from where I stand. As far as 900 billion dollars of immediate cuts I'd say about 20 billion or so are actually enforceable because a new congress can do what ever it wants as we've seen.
A far as the politics the Democrats have come out reasonable and the Tea party and the republicans have come out as crazy and unable to govern and a party who would rather destroy medicare then tax the rich.