Negotiations breakdown - Bottom line.

[kstewart33]

Jay Newton-Small, Time magazine online:

The details of a smaller deficit reduction deal have yet to be worked out, but the collapse of the grand bargain leaves President Obama in a more favorable political position. If both parties agree to cut $2 trillion from the budget with minor tax increases, he’ll notch a bipartisan accomplishment. But he can also say he tried something more ambitious in putting cuts to Social Security and Medicare on the table without facing the political fallout of actually slashing those programs. He went big and congressional Republicans — not to mention the noticeably silent 2012 Republican presidential candidates — didn’t. It will be Republicans who will have to justify bowing to the extreme wing of their party and walking away from a deal that included some ten times more spending cuts than revenue increases. Some things just aren’t too big to fail.

Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2011/07/10/no-grand-bargain-boehner-walks-away-from-big-deficit-deal/#ixzz1RhgJ7iY2

[MH1]

1. Yes. I think he fully expected the repubs to back down and then they look like the bad guys.

I would have been ok with the changes I heard of to SS (CPI and raising retirement age) if we had gotten enough important tax reforms in the deal. (I'm in the minority here for sure.)

[mmonk]

2. Or they will extract more budget cuts from him by standing firm

until the midnight hour.

[vi5]

3. So "bipartisan" is "minor tax increases"?

And would the spending cuts be "minor" or would those be major?