Never been the first to post some news on Kos before, but I don't see anyone else with this news on the diary list right now. According to TPM, Senator Reid has made his three selections for the Senate Democrats who will sit on the new budget Super Committee (a.k.a. Catfood Commission The Next Generation): Senator Patty Murray, Senator John Kerry, and Senator Max Baucus. Hard to read the tea leaves on this one, although I think TPM does a fairly good job at assessing the picks. The key point I think is the following:
So the good news is the Democrats on the committee have all demanded balance in the past, and will have an incentive to stick to that demand. The bad news is balance has no agreed-upon definition, and if Republicans put up a trivial amount of new revenue, Democrats might be tempted to call it a win and cave.
As we know from the Debt Ceiling fight (and from Baucus' efforts during the Health Care debate), "balance" from this lot of Democrats usually equals "capitulation." Hope Pelosi hangs tough and put some folks who actually believe in defending the entitlement programs that form the core basis of the Democratic Party's agenda since the New Deal (the defense of which is what led voters in upstate NY to vote out a Republican from a district that hadn't elected a Democrat in my lifetime!).