First Down or Air Ball?

President Obama announced a deal had been reached to raise the debt limit, but many of the details were still unclear and there were indications the proposal would meet opposition from both parties.

A compromise based on proposals that have been under discussion for weeks, the multi-step plan with a special committee and deadlines and “triggers” would raise the debt ceiling by more than $2 trillion — high enough so lawmakers likely won’t have to go through this exercise again until 2013.
The plan also calls for $1 trillion in savings over 10 years as a first step. Then, a bipartisan committee of House and Senate members would be formed to make recommendations later this year for up to $2 trillion more in savings, including from Medicare.
If the special committee’s work didn’t lead to congressional approval of the additional savings, deep cuts would automatically be triggered, including ones to Medicare and the Pentagon. The trigger was designed to give ample incentive to both parties to make the committee process work, lest their most treasured programs be slashed.
The plan would not require that a balanced-budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution be passed, a provision passed by the House last week. That would ensure many Tea Party Republicans wouldn’t go for it; some conservatives were also reportedly unhappy about the defense-cut trigger.

Until the details of the deal are presented and threshed out, it will be unclear who won. Greg Sargent of the Washington Post says “it apppears the GOP is on the verge of pulling off a political victory that may be unprecedented in American history. Republicans may succeed in using the threat of a potential outcome that they themselves acknowledged would lead to national catastrophe as leverage to extract enormous concessions from Democrats, without giving up anything of any significance in return.” Sargent argued the GOP could hold out longer because the Democrats needed the money more.

Under the emerging deal, President Obama can hike the debt limit in two stages — the first in exchange for equivalent cuts; the second after a Congressional committee comes up with second round of yet more cuts, including to entitlements. The talks appear close to resolving the spending cut “trigger” that would force the committee to act — without giving the GOP an incentive to deliberately sabotage its work. The remaining question is how to get it through the House. But a deal seems immiment.
Again and again, Dems drew lines in the sand that they promptly erased as the threat of default grew. A clean debt ceiling hike? Dropped. Cuts to Medicare benefits? They’ll likely be in that committee’s crosshairs. The insistence on revenue hikes? Withdrawn.
What make this all the more remarkable is that throughout this process, Republicans themselves conceded not just that a debt ceiling hike would be disastrous for America, but also that it was inevitable. Yet they were still able to use the threat of default as leverage. How?
The simple answer: Dems weren’t prepared to allow default — no matter what. Republicans, by contrast, treated the debt ceiling hike as a necessity, but one that had to happen on their terms.

But just because something is touted as a victory doesn’t mean that it is. If the Republicans are determined to give away the store, the leadership would present it as a good deal. But Scribd has the text of John Boehner’s summary of the deal, the bullet points of which are reproduced below. The readers can judge for themselves, from the documentation available, who “won” the negotiations.

TWO-STEP APPROACH TOHOLD PRESIDENT OBAMA ACCOUNTABLE
Emerging framework has three main features:

• (1)cuts government spending more than it increases the debt limit;
• (2)implements spending caps to restrain future spending;
• (3) advances the cause of a Balanced Budget Amendment Framework accomplishes this without tax hikes, which would destroy jobs, while preventing a job-killing national default.

A. NO TAX HIKES

• Same as House-passed bill, the framework includes no tax hikes.
• Requires baseline to be current law, effectively making it impossible for Joint Committee to increase taxes.

B. CUTS THAT EXCEED THE DEBT HIKE

• Same as House-passed bill, framework includes spending cuts that exceed the amount of the increased debt authority granted to POTUS.
• Would cut & cap discretionary spending immediately, saving $917B over10 years (certified by CBO) & raise the debt ceiling by less – $900B – to approximately February.
• Before debt ceiling can be raised, Congress and the president must enact spending cuts of a larger amount first.

C. CAPS TO CONTROL FUTURE SPENDING

• As in House-passed bill, framework imposes spending caps that would set clear limits on future spending & serve as barrier against gov’t expansion while economy grows.
• Failure to remain below these caps triggers automatic across-the-board cuts (“sequestration”).
• Same mechanism used in 1997 Balanced Budget Agreement.

D. BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT

• Same as House-passed bill, framework requires both House & Senate to vote on a BBAafter Oct. 1, 2011 but before the end of year.
• Similar to House-passed bill, framework authorizes POTUS to request second tranche of debt limit increase of $1.5T if:
• Joint Committee cuts spending by greater amount than the requested debt limit hike,OR
• A Balanced Budget Amendment is sent to the states.
• Creates incentive for previous opponents of a BBA to now support it.

E. ENTITLEMENT REFORMS & SAVINGS

• Same as House-passed bill, framework creates a 12-member Joint Committee required to report legislation by November 23, 2011 that would produce aproposal to reduce the deficit by at least $1.5T over 10 years.
  Each chamber would consider Joint Committee proposal on an up-or-down basis without any amendments by December 23, 2011.
• If Joint Committee’s proposal is enacted OR if a Balanced Budget Amendment issent to the states, POTUS would be authorized to request a debt limit increase of$1.5T.

F. ENTITLEMENT REFORMS & SAVINGS

• Sets up a new sequestration process to cut spending across-the-board – and ensure that any debt limitincrease is met with greater spending cuts – IF Joint Committee fails to achieve at least $1.2T in deficit reduction.
• If this happens, POTUS may request up to $1.2T for a debt limit increase, and if granted, then across-the-board spending cuts would result that would equal the difference between $1.2T and the deficit reduction enacted as a result of Joint Committee.
• Across-the-board spending cuts would apply to FYs 2013-2021, and apply to both mandatory & discretionary programs.
• Total reductions would be equally split between defense and non-defense programs.
• Across-the-boardcuts would also apply to Medicare.
• Other programs, including Social Security, Medicaid, veterans, andcivil & military pay, would be exempt.
• Sequestration process is designed to guarantee that Congress acts on the Joint Committee’s legislation to cut spending.

Several items deserve closer inspection. The first and most important is whether Boehner’s claims of “no taxes” and “real savings” are true. The second and arguably more important is how the debt deal affects the relative power relationship between the movement which seeks to reduce the size of government to a manageable and affordable level or whether it simply provides a speedbump on the way to an even larger socialistic state.
Assuming the cuts and the lack of tax hikes are real, the question is why, as Sargent says, Obama lost when he had the Senate, the White House and the media at his back. One possibility is that he ceded the initiative early on to the GOP. He never had a plan, simply the belief that he could force the GOP to surrender on his terms by threatening a government shutdown. If, as Sargent says, the president eventually realized that his political opponents had a greater will to run the risk than it would knock the floor out from under him.
But the devil is in the details and it will be interesting to see which side fared better in the standoff.

Is the "deal" as described a victory for smaller government or smoke and mirrors?

• Victory for smaller government
• Smoke and Mirrors
• Unclear. Let us wait and see

View Results

CITIZENS PROTECTION ACT OF 2011

The history of American Jurisprudence is fraught with expansion of government power and corruption. I have written numerous articles, and a book, on the rights we have lost to government corruption and expansion.

Most everyone, by now, has heard of the terms “general welfare” and “interstate commerce.” These are the two most widely used “excuses” for government expansion of power and abuse of the American citizen.

One such law passed under the guise of interstate commerce was the “Gun Free School Zone Act of 1990. The premise for this law was safety for the school children however the rationale for the federal government getting involved was that having guns near the school would put undue stress of the children, which would make it hard for them to learn and get good grades, which would affect the workforce which would impact interstate commerce.

Now if you are like me when I first read that I could only scratch my head and wonder what the lawyers who wrote that were smoking. Luckily in 1995 a very important case started to reign in the use of interstate commerce to expand the government’s power. This was the case of United States V. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995).

Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote the opinion of the court stating that Congress had the power to regulate only the channels of commerce, the instrumentalities of commerce, or persons or things in interstate commerce, even if the threat comes from intrastate activities, and action that substantially affects interstate commerce. With the governments reasoning, Congress could be found to regulate anything. He further commented that since the Constitution created enumerated powers by which Congress was bound, they could not have such broad reaching powers.

He concluded that:

“To uphold the Government's contentions here, we would have to pile inference upon inference in a manner that would bid fair to convert congressional authority under the Commerce Clause to a general police power of the sort retained by the States. Admittedly, some of our prior cases have taken long steps down that road, giving great deference to congressional action. The broad language in these opinions has suggested the possibility of additional expansion, but we decline here to proceed any further. To do so would require us to conclude that the Constitution's enumeration of powers does not presuppose something not enumerated, and that there never will be a distinction between what is truly national and what is truly local. This we are unwilling to do.

So here we can plainly see Chief Justice Rehnquist openly admitting to the expansion of government power outside the bounds of those enumerated in the Constitution and here we are sixteen years later and the law is still on the books.

Title 18, Section 922, paragraph (a), sub-paragraph (q) goes through the laundry list of connections between all the different dark alleys of logic used to connect Joe Citizen walking along the sidewalk legally carrying a defensive sidearm to the insane effect on interstate commerce and thus Congress’ power to regulate that action – Liberty be damned.

Today, however, we have a champion for truth, justice, and the Constitutional way by Representative Ron Paul who introduced on the floor H.R. 2613 – Titled the Citizens Protection Act of 2011.

Unlike the thousands of pages of legislation the communist liberals need to fool the American people into thinking they are doing something good; Representative Paul’s bill is a single page which would simply “Repeal the Gun Free School Zones Act of 1990 and Amendments to that Act.”

I think it is quite simple to understand that if you disarm all the “law-abiding” citizens from defending themselves and their loved ones the only people who will have arms, and the will to use them, will be the bad guy. We have seen it time and time again – shootings in churchs where laws prohibit law abiding citizens from having firearms, shopping malls, schools, restaurants, and even on military bases. In each and every case the bad guy was able to kill with impunity because there was no one there that was armed to stop them.

People are killed not because they have a gun; people are killed because they have had the ability to defend themselves taken away, unconstitutionally I might add. It is time we stopped empowering the criminal and place the power back where it belongs – IN THE HANDS OF THE LAW ABIDING CITIZEN.

OBAMA'S MISCALCULATION

President Obama’s July 25 address to the nation on the debt crisis was a major political blunder. Without a precise proposal of his own to forward and with only a list of complaints about Republican impediments to his goal of raising taxes on the wealthiest while maintaining unaffordable entitlement programs that vastly outstrip the modest spending reductions he favors, he appeared just another voice in a congressional slug fest, very non-presidential, rather pedestrian. There is a great aura and power to the presidency that some, like Ronald Reagan, captured naturally. The bully pulpit the President has available to him is considerable, yet a failure to appreciate the importance of exercising decisive power has brought defeat to many of both parties, from Gerald Ford to Jimmy Carter. President Obama missed this opportunity, like he has so many times before, to inspire Americans to believe him firmly in command, a man capable of decisive leadership. We should be grateful for that because the course he charts for America is one that leads inevitably to massive government expansion, planned economies, and economic ruin.

The Republican retort, given by House Speaker Boehner, scolded the President, showing none of the once common deference for that office. It reinforced the image of President Obama as yet another contender in Congress’s budget battle rather than as an independent, true leader. The President’s attempt to build consensus behind his desired “balanced” approach (which is anything but balanced because it favors tax increases and maintenance of enormous federal debt) failed miserably. He miscalculated. He apparently thought he could persuade Americans by simply criticizing his opposition, not offering a true solution to an overwhelming problem. He appeared to wash his hands of the affair (taking no responsibility for his own spending bills that contributed mightily to the financial crisis).

I suspect the July 25 address will come back to haunt the President. It reduces his image to an even greater extent in the estimation of the American public. Americans expect their Presidents to lead in the darkest hours, not appear defeated and full of bile and complaints. They expect solutions to be offered, not excuses. They rightfully reject those who blame the American people for the hardships imposed by government. That lesson former President James Earl Carter learned to his great chagrin as the American people exchanged his pessimism and indecision for Reagan’s optimism and decisive leadership. President Carter blamed the American people for a sense of “malaise” which he said contributed to the double whammy of high unemployment and high inflation. That move contributed to his defeat. Unlike President Reagan, President Obama is a reactionary, not a true leader. He does not lead in this budget crisis, he responds. He came to the American people, not at the outset with a clear solution but at the end when even were there a clear solution it would not stem the fall-out that will come from the downgrading of America’s credit rating, the consequent increase in mortgage interest rates, increase in commercial loan rates, and further retardation of economic recovery.

Likewise, President Obama’s extended negotiation sessions with members of Congress at the White House, refusal to propose a clear plan to eliminate the national debt without raising taxes in a recession, and attempt to blame others for the very excesses of government to which he has contributed bespeak failure, gloom, and uncertainty. Americans expect their Presidents to lead with a clear vision and an irrepressible sense of optimism. They also expect their Presidents to be apparently above partisan bickering, even if they behind the scenes involve themselves deeply in the congressional battle.

It was a mistake for Obama to invite his adversaries to join him in the White House for negotiations. That approach inevitably leads to an “us versus them” perception, to a view that one party or the other will come out of this a winner. There is no face saving option in such close quarters and dramatic interactions among steadfast opponents. Instead of this approach which could only work if the Republicans completely capitulated, Obama had to rise to the occasion and offer a detailed solution of his own. He had to lead, and yet he must have thought that by leading he would make himself a clear target. Precisely right, but America expects its Presidents to be courageous in a crisis, to lead even at the expense of re-election. He chose to react to plans brought to him and maintain a degree of plausible deniability: Well, the plan I sign into law today is not the plan I wanted but is the best we could get from Congress in the time available. That refusal to lead will come back to haunt him, whether he wins re-election or not. His track record is one of defeat, reaction, excuse, and complaint.

Obama’s July 25 speech sounded more like a eulogy for America than a rallying cry to restore American prosperity. It is a speech that should be exploited by his opposition because it truly establishes that in the most important contest of his administration and the most dire crisis in American economic history he could not lead. From the vantage point of liberals, he must be viewed as an insufferable sell-out. From the vantage point of conservatives, he epitomizes a person so wedded to government as an end all, be all, that he has no currency with them. From the vantage point of the typical American who has a generally conservative predisposition, he appears weak, vacillating, indecisive, and ultimately to blame for not acting responsibly to cure rather than contribute to the government’s financial ills and the nation’s poor economy.

No President is great who does not rise to greatness in the midst of a crisis. No President is respected whose agenda depends more on complaints than on solutions. No President is capable of uniting and inspiring the American people who lacks a clear vision that hearkens back to those principles that made the nation prosperous and free. No President is deserving of the trust of the American people who places more faith in government than in the people. These weaknesses in Obama offer a very definite chance to defeat him, if only his opposition is intelligent enough to realize the weaknesses and exploit them.

Although it is too early to know who will face Obama in the general election, we can now describe the characteristics that candidate must have to beat the President. Victory depends on clear contrasts. In contrast to Obama’s defeatist viewpoint that we must accept as inevitable a long recession with high unemployment, his opponent must unequivocally reject that view and adopt instead an optimistic vision that if we liberate American people and business from an oppressive and costly federal government, we can fully expect an end to the recession and a restoration of full employment.

In contrast to Obama’s defeatist viewpoint that the budget must remain unbalanced in order to afford entitlement programs that are, in truth, unaffordable, his opponent must demand passage of a balanced budget amendment, explain that spending beyond our means into the indefinite future is irresponsible and unsustainable, and clearly articulate innovative means to reduce public dependency on entitlements, increase individual retention of earnings through a program of ending the individual income tax, and eliminate government departments and agencies wherever possible.

In contrast to Obama’s defeatist viewpoint that the private sector is incapable of sustaining economic growth unless directed by the government through multi-trillion dollar bail-out, stimulus, and economic programs, his opponent must reveal that private solutions, not government planning, built the American economy into the greatest in the world, regulation has brought it down, and liberation from regulation can restore the economy to the heights of freedom and prosperity. In short, while Obama portrays the nation as inevitably bound to a massive federal government that costs so much that it necessarily brings everything down, his opponent must reveal that view to buy into failure, must reject it, and must explain instead that there is a simple, well-established recipe for American success: If we let Americans retain their own income and have the freedom to build their own businesses, they will inevitably restore the nation to prosperity.

Why There Is No Trust In Washington

The day of the congressional handshake deal is over. Perhaps it was only ever a much-loved urban legend. Who knows? Watching the discord among elected officials in Washington this past week, many Americans are wondering: why don’t they trust one another, why can’t congress arrive at an acceptable solution?
Doris Kearns Goodwin tries to advance the flawed notion that if elected officials, both Democrats and Republicans, spent more time together, they would build more trust in one another, and, thus, find needed compromises easier to achieve. I think she’s wrong. Members of Congress do not know each other too little. Disagreements occur because they know each other too well.
Democrats gained control of the House of Representatives in 2006 and gained the White House in 2008. For the past five years, Democrats have controlled the legislative process and for almost three years, Dems have controlled the Executive agencies. Democrat bungling and demagoguery have become the order of the day. The outright lies told to fellow members of congress and to the American people would make Pinocchio blush.
Is it any wonder that Republicans in congress find it hard to trust Democrats?
Consider, for example, the president’s promise that the $787 billion stimulus would create between 3 to 4 million new jobs. Didn’t happen. In fact, with unemployment at 9.2% and even government employment declining, the past thirty months have shown that Obama clearly overpromised and has under-delivered.
Speaker Pelosi promised that Obamacare would create an additional 4 million jobs. Didn’t happen. Furthermore, Democrats promised that under Obamacare, there would be no additional cost to the American taxpayer and they promised that insurance costs would not increase. Instead, Americans find that Obamacare will cost, at a minimum, $400 billion more than Democrats in congress claimed. Insurance companies have increased their rates by almost 25%. Furthermore, the promise that "everyone could keep the insurance they currently have" has all been forgotten. Much to their credit, Republicans argue that the promises of Obama, Reid, Durbin and Pelosi were hollow and would be broken. But, Democrats cling to their myths and distortions like a drowning man to a piece of wood.
When caught telling a whopper, the current crop of Democrat leaders show not a hint of remorse or shame. Democrat leaders see no problem promising Americans that they can expand benefits and coverage to all without ever raising taxes. Democrats figure that once the bill passes, and the inevitable constitutional challenges appear, they can quickly shift gears and rebrand the individual mandate as a tax, no doubt depending upon the fact that few Americans will remember, much less hold them accountable for their earlier promises.
Whether it is Obama, chastising Supreme Court justices at the 2010 State of the Union Address or chastising Republicans for inflammatory comments and demanding an end to patently partisan language and behavior, Obama has proved that he is part of the problem when he could not resist demagoguing Paul Ryan for his courage in putting forth a deficit management-budget cutting plan.
Democrat leadership has espoused a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do approach to government, resorting to calumny and demagoguery as their tools. Is it any wonder that, in congress, comity and civility are dead?
Then there’s the special case of Tim Geithner, the boy who cried wolf, and his sky-is-falling approach to fear-mongering. Americans were told that May 16 was the deadline to resolve the debt ceiling issue. But, it seems it really wasn’t. Then Americans were told that August 2nd was the deadline to resolve the debt ceiling issue. But, it seems it really wasn’t. Geithner, mouthing some mumbo-jumbo about Asian markets opening, claimed the deadline was really 4pm on July 24th—but, it seems it really wasn’t. Again. And now, it seems as if the debt ceiling window can be extended until August 10th. Sure. Why not?
For an Administration that claims it will have “unprecedented” transparency, Republicans in congress are finding it difficult to get anything in writing on the President’s approach to managing the debt ceiling and cutting the federal budget. Democrats in the Senate claim they are eager to get resolution on the debt ceiling, but Reid won’t even call for cloture on his own proposal, or put it to a vote.
Anyone who isn’t clear on why Republicans in congress are skeptical of Democrat promises has only to look at the Democrat track record. In the past, when children caught a schoolmate in a lie, they used to cry out “liar, liar, pants on fire”. Republicans, acting cautiously when confronted with Democrat lies, are simply too civil to admit the Democrats in congress and the White House have POFUS. Pants On Fire Syndrome.
Republicans don’t trust Democrat promises—not because there are so many new Republican members of congress and not because they are still strangers to one another, but because, sadly, they know and understand each other too well. Familiarity may not always breed contempt, but in the case of the Democrat leadership and the years of broken promises, familiarity might be a good explanation.

Eat Those Peas Mr. President

Hope those peas taste good.
After trying with all his might to raise taxes and demonize the “rich,” Obama finally has to accept a debt and budget deal that severely hampers his ability to get reelected because he couldn’t raise taxes on CEOs and corporate jets.
I love the taste of those peas in the morning.
As I wrote on July 2^nd, in any budget and debt negotiation Obama was going to come out a loser if he didn’t raise taxes. Well, check and checkmate.
The reason?
Because the GOP already enjoys the high ground in the debate. And they will continue to enjoy it because voters know that federal spending and debt are out of control. Forget that the GOP took it on the chin with the public playing the heavy in the debate. The GOP “brand” isn’t running for reelection. Members are and so is the president.
Forget also that the budget deal doesn’t come close to really cutting spending or debt by the order of magnitude that the country needs. We have an election coming up that will solve that problem one way or another.
Right now here are the numbers that really matter:
A “national telephone survey finds that 62% of Likely U.S. Voters are worried more that Congress and President Obama will raise taxes too much rather than too little in any deal to end the debt ceiling debate,” reports Rasmussen. The survey also found a strong majority were worried that the deal wouldn’t cut enough in spending.
Voters know now that Republicans: 1) stopped tax increases and 2) wanted bigger spending cuts.
On the two major issues that voters care about, the GOP was on the right side of the debate: Check. And checkmate.
Despite what voters say about favoring a debt and budget approach that raised taxes and cut spending, few politicians have successfully run for reelection on a platform of raising taxes.
It’s doubtful that even Obama could pull off a “Vote for me, I raised taxes” campaign.
Members in swing states and swing districts were never going to try it.
The best Obama could have hoped for was dividing the GOP significantly.
With the debt deal agreed to by the White House, the Senate and the House leadership on Sunday evening, you find a GOP differing only by shades of gray. Significant shades most certainly, but nothing that will bother us Hobbits too much.
The most important victory is that the agreement ensures that a balanced budget amendment is going to get a seat at the grown up table during the presidential campaign.
It’s likely that between now and the presidential election that at least one balanced budget provision will come before Congress. Most states already have balanced budget provisions.
The balanced budget amendment is big because it most directly constrains Obama’s and the progressives’ Big Government ideas. If you can force them to raise taxes every time they pass laws spending money on rainbows and unicorns you’ll find progressives will become as rare as the unicorn.     
“I’m gonna tell you, this has been a long battle – we’ve fought valiantly – and frankly we’ve done it by listening to the American people,” said Boehner according to Politico. “And as a result, our framework is now on the table that will end this crisis in a manner that meets our principles of smaller government.”
And that’s really bitter food for a president who challenged the Congress to eat only the Big Government peas that he was serving to the rest of us.
Eat that, Mr. President.

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Republicans Win When the Fight Is Over Cuts Not More Taxes

Everyone seems pretty cross at this juncture in the fight over raising the debt limit. As this is written, the House has just passed the bill that Speaker John Boehner yanked from the floor Thursday night and then revised with a balanced-budget amendment on Friday. The Senate has yet to pass Majority Leader Harry Reid's measure that in many but not all respects is not that much different.
It looks like the Senate will approve Reid's measure and that the two bills, framed in a way that makes compromise relatively easy, will be melded into one version that could be passed by bipartisan majorities of both houses in time to meet the supposedly hard deadline of Tuesday, Aug. 2.
But it's not certain everything will work out, and in the meantime nobody's very happy about the whole situation.
Democrats seem especially unhappy. They could have avoided the fight in the first place by raising the debt ceiling in the lame duck session in December, when they had large majorities in both houses of Congress.
But they decided not to. Reid's comments then suggested that he expected the issue to split the House Republicans, pitting the leadership against the 87 Tea Party-sympathizing freshmen. The leaders would have to agree to a tax increase in order to get a deal, with a party schism like the one that followed George H.W. Bush's agreement to a tax increase in 1990.
That didn't happen. Instead Reid abandoned his demand for a tax increase. The reason, I think, is that he hasn't had a 50-vote majority for a tax increase in the Senate, just as Senate Democrats haven't been able to pass a budget.
All of which left Barack Obama looking somewhat ridiculous when he called for more taxes in his televised speech Monday night. When you're trying to show you're leading and your followers have already gone off in another direction, you tend to look like something other than a leader.
Some Democrats, in frustration, have said House Republicans are acting "almost like a dictatorship" or are using "terrorist tactics." But in opposing tax increases, House Republicans are just being true to the voters who gave them in November 2010 a larger majority than they have won since 1946.
Other Democrats have taken to blaming Obama. Robert Reich, labor secretary in the Clinton administration, decries an empty bully pulpit. Paul Krugman, the trade economist who writes partisan vitriol for The New York Times, talks about a centrist copout.
Such complaints seem to ignore a lesson that Democrats were happy to teach Republicans after November 2008: Elections have consequences.
Our Constitution does not allow the Republicans, who won big in 2010, to immediately repeal Obamacare and pare back spending to 2007 levels, and they're pretty frustrated about that. Enough of them remained obdurate to prevent Boehner's bill from passing Thursday and to push him to include a provision supposedly forcing passage of a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget.
All of which weakens Boehner's bargaining position and may mean a final bill less tilted to Republican demands. But, as many Democrats note, the battle is being fought over how much spending to cut, which means that Republicans are winning. The question is just how much.
Democrats went into this fight with a precedent in mind, the budget fight between President Clinton and Speaker Newt Gingrich in 1995-96. The conventional wisdom is that Clinton won that fight and Republicans lost.
That's not quite right: After shifting to noticeably more moderate policies, Clinton was re-elected in 1996, but Republicans lost few House seats and held onto their congressional majorities at the same time.
The difference this time is that Obama has not shifted policies noticeably, but instead has seemed to position himself as a complainer on the sidelines, asking voters to call their congressman. He has presented no specific plan of his own. His chief of staff reports that he hasn't spoken at all to Boehner lately.
Just as he left the specifics of the stimulus package and Obamacare to congressional Democrats, so he has left the framing of an alternative to Harry Reid, whose Senate Democrats haven't passed a budget resolution in two years.
On Friday, the Gallup poll showed Obama's job approval down to 40 percent, the lowest of his presidency. Voters are cross with everybody, but he has the most to lose.

GOP, Obama Reach $2 Trillion Debt Deal to Avert Default

Republicans and Democrats in Congress reached agreement with President Barack Obama to raise the limit on U.S. borrowing and forestall an unprecedented American default, marking the start in the final chapter of one of the nastiest and divisive episodes in recent American political history. 
Shortly after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his Republican counterpart, minority leader Mitchell McConnell, endorsed the plan on the Senate floor, Obama went to the White House press room to add his support for the deal. It meets one of his key demands, raising borrowing power sufficiently to keep the partisan poison pill from returning to the national agenda until after the 2012 election. It does not include any tax increases that Obama had pressed hard for to include.
House Speaker John Boehner, in a conference call with Republican members of the lower chamber, said the deal was a good one that met the demands of all Republicans.
Bowing to the still unknown outcome of congressional action, Obama said important votes remained to be taken but that leaders of both parties in both houses of Congress were agreed to a plan that would initially cut about $1 trillion from U.S. spending, "the lowest level of domestic spending since Dwight Eisenhower was president" in the 1950s.
"Is this the deal I would have preferred," Obama asked, answering his own question with one word. "No."
But he said: "Most importantly it will allow us to avoid default and end the crisis that Washington imposed on the rest of American. An it will allow us to lift the cloud of debt and uncertainty" that has hung above the United States for weeks.
No votes were expected in either house of Congress until Monday at the earliest, to give rank and file lawmakers to review the package. Tuesday is the deadline to avoid a U.S. default on payments to investors in Treasury bonds, recipients of Social Security pension checks, those relying on military veterans benefits and businesses that do work for the government.
Obama and many economists and financial experts predicted global chaos and plunging stock markets had no deal been reached by midnight Tuesday.
If approved in Monday votes, the compromise would presumably preserve America's sterling credit rating, reassure investors in financial markets across the globe and possibly reverse the losses that spread across Wall Street in recent days as the threat of a default grew.
The broadest outlines of the emerging plan, a deal that involved deep negotiations between McConnell and Vice President Joe Biden, would raise the federal debt limit in two stages by at least $2.2 trillion, enough to tide the Treasury over until after the 2012 elections.
Big cuts in government spending would be phased in over a decade. Thousands of programs — the Park Service, Internal Revenue Service and Labor Department accounts among them — could be trimmed to levels last seen years ago.
No benefit cuts were envisioned for the Social Security pension system or Medicare, the federal program that provides health care payments to the elderly. But other programs would be scoured for savings. Taxes would be unlikely to rise.
The first step would take place immediately, raising the debt limit by nearly $1 trillion and cutting spending by a slightly larger amount over a decade.
That would be followed by creation of a new congressional committee that would have until the end of November to recommend $1.8 trillion or more in deficit cuts, targeting benefit programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, or overhauling the tax code. Those deficit cuts would allow a second increase in the debt limit, which would be needed by early next year.
If the committee failed to reach its $1.8 trillion target, or Congress failed to approve its recommendations by the end of 2011, lawmakers would then have to vote on a proposed constitutional balanced-budget amendment.
If that failed to pass, automatic spending cuts totaling $1.2 trillion would automatically take effect, and the debt limit would rise by an identical amount.
Social Security, Medicaid and food stamps would be exempt from the automatic cuts, but payments to doctors, nursing homes and other Medicare providers could be trimmed, as could subsidies to insurance companies that offer an alternative to government-run Medicare.
Any agreement will have to be passed by the Democratic-controlled Senate, which was seen as assured, and Republican-controlled House, which still could face a major tussle, before going to the White House for Obama's signature. With precious little time remaining, both chambers had been on standby throughout the day Sunday.
Some Republicans were said to still be balking over proposed cuts in defense spending. It also was unclear how the 87 new House members, voted in with support from the low-tax, small-government tea party wing of the Republican Party, would vote. But it was believed that both Boehner, the Republican House speaker, and Reid, leader of majority Democrats in the Senate, felt certain they could garner sufficient votes.
The coming days will be clogged with statements from both Republicans, especially the tea party caucus, and Democrats as they try to convince their constituencies that they held firm and won the day in the bitter divide over how the government operates and what it owes to its citizens.
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