Just when you think that you’re out…they pull you back in:
At least a dozen Republican senators are regularly meeting with President Obama’s top aides in an attempt to plot a way forward on the looming fiscal challenges facing leaders this fall, senators involved in the meetings tell National Journal.
The meetings, which began after Obama hosted GOP senators for dinner earlier this year, are the first sign that Democrats and Republicans are in talks to strike a deal that would reduce the deficit and reform entitlements and taxes.
“Everybody’s trying to assess whether we can accomplish something that would be big,” said Republican Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, who has attended the meetings. “Big is reforming entitlements and it’s impossible to see a path where you get additional revenue without tax reform being part of it.”
For those of us who don’t want a Grand Bargain at all, this is not good news. But if you keep reading the piece it becomes clear that for all the behind-the-scenes talks, not much has actually changed since the last time lawmakers tried to burnish their legacies by cutting social insurance:
The differences between the two sides, which helped kill a grand bargain between Obama and GOP House Speaker John Boehner last year, remain vast. Namely, Republicans want to see tax and entitlement reform while Democrats want more revenue….
An administration official said White House aides have made clear to Republicans that the president’s offer from December—including $600 billion in new tax revenue for $400 billion in Medicare and other health care cuts—still stands.
Republicans are open to $600 billion in revenue, Burr said, but want to see it come from a mix of entitlement and tax reform. And the GOP opposes Obama’s $400 billion in Medicare cuts, arguing they want more structural reforms.
The danger — again, for those who oppose the Grand Bargain — is that given enough time, Republicans will ultimately figure out how to take yes for an answer. I thought that the window had closed and the time had passed, and that was why the White House hadn’t said peep about a “big” deal in weeks. But it looks like the Grand Bargain is simply too strongly desired by the political class to ever truly go away.
You know what’s sad, Elias? That this headline works for almost everything that’s happening in DC right now that’s being talked about in the press.Report
Yes, I’ve found 2013 to be an abysmal year for American politics.Report
I’ve found it to be quite good.
But it takes a certain perspective for that.
“All politics is local” and all that rubbish.Report
I’m a big enough man to admit I was wrong…
Come back, Herman Cain. Please. We bloggers need you.Report
There’s an old saying from Japanese samurai – ‘the peasant should not be allowed to die, but neither should he be allowed to live’.
The elites really, really want to steal our retirement and medical care. The ideologues want to help (usually, they’re set up so that it won’t bite them on the *ss). The masses don’t want this (even most of the Tea Party), but the power of the elites is that they can get away with taking ‘no’ to mean ‘try again later’.Report
I don’t see advantage to Boehner et al. in reaching a Grand Bargain. Of necessity, the Democrats must be able to hold up a trophy and say “We got you this!” and if they can proclaim any sort of victory the Republicans’ base will accuse Boehner of caving in and selling out. Even if the substance of the deal is 90% what the GOP said they wanted going in.
I do see an advantage to Obama for reaching a Grand Bargain — he can say he avoided another sequester, he gets a trophy, he can call himself a “centrist” and a “uniter” and all the rest of that. A policy loss is still a political win for him. Ergo, it is a tactical loss for the Republicans, but that’s getting back to my first paragraph.
So the least bad result we can hope for, in my opinion, is another sequester. “Least bad” does not mean I’m happy about that. If Republicans weren’t on autopilot to “destroy Obama no matter what” that might be different.Report