Almost There

President #Compromise is ready.

Around 8:30pm [Sunday night] the chief Senate Democrat Harry Reid and his Republican counterpart Mitch McConnell hit the chamber floor to announce they had reached a deal in principle. Now they just need to sell it to their members. The Senate is due to reconvene at 10:30am Monday with a view to taking a vote in the following hours.

[...]

Even if the bill passes the Senate it still has to make its way through the House. Speaker John Boehner provided the GOP caucus with a power-point presentation to try to sell them on the plan. However, he faces a sizable conservative rump that is still unsatisfied, largely because of concerns about defense cuts and the now-downgraded (and ludicrous) Balanced Budget Amendment.

On the other side of the aisle, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has to hand her Democrats a plan that many regard as an utter capitulation to the Republicans. A progressive backlash is already underway. The bill has until Tuesday to clear both chambers and land on the President's desk.

TPM

Of course the loonies have reason to believe that they can get even more out of #Compromise. Why would they think otherwise? And the Democrats? It is an utter capitulation, and there aren’t enough progressives to amount to a hill of beans.

The Progressive Caucus and the Black Caucus have scheduled a press conference for Monday to outline why they are opposed to the deal.

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“This deal does not even attempt to strike a balance between more cuts for the working people of America and a fairer contribution from millionaires and corporations,” Progressive Caucus leader Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) said in a statement Sunday night. “I will not be a part of it.”The Black Caucus Sunday released a letter urging Obama to invoke the 14th Amendment and take the debt crisis into his own hands.

In a floor speech Sunday prior to the deal announcement, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) encouraged the same.

Trouble also lurks, more familiarly, to Obama's right.

Raw Story

And there isn’t much left in that position.

Not even enough if you add the Black Caucus and a couple of independents is there enough to stop this train wreck. The Tea Party is the only thing that could possibly stop it. And that could mean an actual default. Are they really that insane? No doubt. But does it matter much when we collapse? Now or next year? It’s like watching the twin towers come down again. First the symbolism, now the reality.

"This isn't the greatest deal in the world," Boehner said in a statement Sunday night, urging a vote as soon as possible. "But it shows how much we've changed the terms of the debate in this town."

Debate over something that should never even be debated. The things that should be go unchallenged.

Obama, for one, realized that the vote has not happened yet, and encouraged Americans to continue to contact their members of Congress to express support for the plan.

"We're not done yet," he said Sunday night.

He expects the American public to bail him out. Perhaps he should look for his support to the people he bailed out. And he does. He’s just setting the stage to blame the American public for their own suffering. He’s much too cool, too awesome, too good and always right to be responsible for anything wrong.

In the end, President Obama had to admit surrender. He tried to put a bold face on it, but there's no other way to interpret his remarks to the nation announcing that Congressional leaders had cut a deal to raise the debt ceiling.

The details of the deal are stark: at least $2.5 trillion in spending cuts over the next two years, a two-stage approach to raising the debt ceiling, and a new committee to recommend further cuts to entitlement programs, along with huge automatic spending cuts if Congress fails to institute that plan.

As described, the deal is a major victory for Republicans that will further embolden them over the next 18 months, and may mortally wound Obama's chances of reelection.

Salon

I hope so. But if the Republicans don’t come up with something other than a lunatic, the corporations are going to continue to back their man Obama.

I’m feeling slightly wistful for the bad old Bush days. (I know, bite my tongue.) Then we had a few honest brokers and heroes. Richard Clarke, Generals Shinseki and Taguba, Joe Wilson, Paul O’Neill. Now, we’ve got nothing. Wikileaks, I guess, and they will probably be destroyed. But nobody in government to stand up and put their job on the line to tell the truth. I guess those guys were the last of the dying breed.

The president told the nation that after ten years the United States would have "the lowest level of annual domestic spending since Dwight Eisenhower was President." He said this as if it was something to be proud of. The truth is, we are a far different nation today than we were in the 1950s. We have millions more citizens, and are undergoing a major demographic shift as the Baby Boomer generation ages. With health care costs continuing to rise, the squeeze will be on. People will suffer.

Yeah, well, people who aren’t suffering never change anything.

Obama has long maintained that revenue increases that would partially balance out any cuts to entitlement programs must be part of any deal. But there are no revenue increases in this deal.

He also insisted there would be no short-term raising of the debt ceiling. His word means nothing – as we’ve seen from the beginning of his term, but he gave up the ghost on this one. He belongs to the Republicans now. They own him.

After what we've seen so far, first in the government shutdown drama and now in the debt ceiling fight -- when Republicans hold firm, Democrats give in. The pattern has been set.

In concrete.

But at least Congress will be able to recess on time next week. The deal -- and the damage -- is done.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.