I read that Boehner is going for a $2 trillion deal. I hope that's wrong because that will mean he's abandoning his base and may well cause a revolt ending in a third party with another term for Obama.
Boehner’s in a bit of a pickle, and I don’t envy him his chair one bit In any negotiation between people who *want* a solution to the problem, there exists common ground where the two sides can agree, and disputed ground where the two sides can compromise until a solution is found that both sides really don’t have to like a whole lot, but is much better than the problem they face. What the Speaker faces is a Democrat opposition that does *not* want a solution to this problem, they want taxes raised. It doesn’t matter to the Democrats if the dollar crashes, the economy is wrecked, the budget is shredded, Grandma has to sell knitting to survive and hordes of zombies roam the street. The Dems have one goal and one goal only, to raise taxes. They realize the economy will eventually recover at least partway no matter how they try to break it, and if they can just get a teeny-tiny-itsy-bitsy tax increase into any budget deal even if it has trillions of dollars worth of cuts and tens of dollars worth of new taxes, they can take credit when the economy rebounds, even if it is just a dead-cat bounce. Now here comes Boehner, going into negotiations with the Dems. He knows they are willing-to-wreck-the-economy-crazy, he knows if he backs down on “no new taxes” even a dollars worth, the fiscal conservative Republicans will scream murder and the Dems will run around like they just won the Nobel prize. The only thing he can do (we hope) is to hold tight and try to persuade enough sane Democrats willing to talk sense and cut the budget so we can get a deal. After all, Obama is not crazy enough to veto a budget agreement that passes both the House and Senate. Right?
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Boehner’s in a bit of a pickle, and I don’t envy him his chair one bit In any negotiation between people who *want* a solution to the problem, there exists common ground where the two sides can agree, and disputed ground where the two sides can compromise until a solution is found that both sides really don’t have to like a whole lot, but is much better than the problem they face.
What the Speaker faces is a Democrat opposition that does *not* want a solution to this problem, they want taxes raised. It doesn’t matter to the Democrats if the dollar crashes, the economy is wrecked, the budget is shredded, Grandma has to sell knitting to survive and hordes of zombies roam the street. The Dems have one goal and one goal only, to raise taxes. They realize the economy will eventually recover at least partway no matter how they try to break it, and if they can just get a teeny-tiny-itsy-bitsy tax increase into any budget deal even if it has trillions of dollars worth of cuts and tens of dollars worth of new taxes, they can take credit when the economy rebounds, even if it is just a dead-cat bounce.
Now here comes Boehner, going into negotiations with the Dems. He knows they are willing-to-wreck-the-economy-crazy, he knows if he backs down on “no new taxes” even a dollars worth, the fiscal conservative Republicans will scream murder and the Dems will run around like they just won the Nobel prize. The only thing he can do (we hope) is to hold tight and try to persuade enough sane Democrats willing to talk sense and cut the budget so we can get a deal.
After all, Obama is not crazy enough to veto a budget agreement that passes both the House and Senate. Right?
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