Obama and Boehner couldn't agree on which GOP budget plan they liked better

Jonathan Cohn at TNR:

The main difference, as both sides acknowledge, was over the size of the new revenue. They’d basically settled the basic principles of how to get the money: By closing loopholes, broadening the base, and lowering rates overall. Boehner had offered $800 billion, or roughly the equivalent of letting the upper income tax cuts expire. Obama had counter-offered $1.2 trillion. But even the $1.2 trillion Obama was seeking – and remember, this was a proposal over which the White House says it expected to keep negotiating – was still far less than the revenue either the Bowles-Simpson chairmen or the Senate’s Gang of Six, two bipartisan groups, had recommended.

Or, to put it more simply, both proposals were far more tilted towards the Republican position, of seeking to balance the budget primarily if not wholly through spending cuts. When this debate started, liberals like me were advocating a balance of spending reductions to new revenue of roughly one-to-one, which is what the Bipartisan Policy Center’s report by Pete Domenici and Alice Rivlin had recommended. But the president had been offering, right up through the end of these negotiations, plans that had ratios of roughly three-to-one or maybe worse.

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Sen. Sanders (I-VT) suggests Obama should be primaried

Sanders caucuses with the Democrats, meaning, for all intents and purposes, he is a Democrat. This is not insignificant.

SANDERS: Brian, believe me, I wish I had the answer to your question. Let me just suggest this. I think there are millions of Americans who are deeply disappointed in the president; who believe that, with regard to Social Security and a number of other issues, he said one thing as a candidate and is doing something very much else as a president; who cannot believe how weak he has been, for whatever reason, in negotiating with Republicans and there’s deep disappointment. So my suggestion is, I think one of the reasons the president has been able to move so far to the right is that there is no primary opposition to him and I think it would do this country a good deal of service if people started thinking about candidates out there to begin contrasting what is a progressive agenda as opposed to what Obama is doing. [...] So I would say to Ryan [sic] discouragement is not an option. I think it would be a good idea if President Obama faced some primary opposition.

A reader in the comments suggests it's time for Senator Sanders to put his money where his mouth is. Read the rest of this post...

Boehner to offer debt deal that Dems. have already rejected, includes short-term deal

The pressure is on Boehner and he's trying to make sure financial markets don't tank in the wake of his recent shenanigans. It feels like this has all been a political game for Boehner, but there are really serious consequences:

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told his GOP rank-and-file that congressional leaders are working round the clock on a deal set for release before the Asian markets open on Sunday at 4 p.m., a source tells The Hill.

Boehner gave few details as to the yet-to-be-seen proposal, according to an official who participated in the conference call held following a tense meeting at the White House on Saturday afternoon.

"He didn't mention any details; he said the big deal is the Asian markets tomorrow and therefore, we've got to get something out there," the source said, with a cynical attitude as to the urgency of the Asian markets.

So, Boehner has finally figured out the financial markets will tank if there's no deal. His friends on Wall Street have been warning him about that for months.

The NYT reports that Boehner is cooking up a package of cuts worth $3-4 trillion:

Hoping to reassure markets in the wake of an angry breakdown in the federal budget negotiations, Congressional leaders raced Saturday to reach a new deficit-reduction agreement that Speaker John A. Boehner told colleagues could cut $3 trillion to $4 trillion in spending over 10 years.

“We are working, and I’m confident there will be resolution,” Mr. Boehner told fellow House Republicans on an afternoon conference call, according to participants. “There has to be.”

There has to be. Exactly.

And, Sam Stein reports that Boehner is going to include a short-term debt ceiling fix, which Obama has specifically rejected:

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is set to call the Democratic Party's bluff on the debt ceiling. The Ohio Republican, in a briefing with his conference on Saturday, announced that he would press for a short-term deal, with major spending cuts paired with longer-term deficit-reduction strategies, as a way around the current impasse.

As Boehner knows, Hill Democrats have consistently rejected any plan that relies solely on cuts -- Obama does not want a short-term extension. But, he's pushing both anyway. Now, he's just trying to jam it through, assuming Democrats will just go along instead of letting the country default. Because, there has to be. Read the rest of this post...

Obama losing liberal voters as approval rating drops

Alienating seniors sounds like a daring strategy for 2012 when you're already angering the base of the party. Brilliant.

According to the poll, the president's 45 percent approval rating is down three points from June. Fifty-four percent of people questioned disapprove of how Obama's handling his duties, up six points from last month. His 54 percent disapproval rating ties the all-time high in CNN polling that the president initially reached just before last year's midterm elections.

"But drill down into that number and you'll see signs of a stirring discontent on the left," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "Thirty-eight percent say they disapprove because President Obama has been too liberal, but 13 percent say they disapprove of Obama because he has not been liberal enough - nearly double what it was in May, when the question was last asked, and the first time that number has hit double digits in Obama's presidency."

Looking at that figure another way, roughly one in four Americans who disapprove of the president say they feel that way because he's not been liberal enough.

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Is the GOP deliberately trying to crash the economy?

I'm not making the statement, but I am asking the question, and I'm asking it seriously. The man making the statement is Thom Hartmann on The Big Picture. Here he is in conversation with Cliff Schecter, discussing that very subject:



Hartmann: "The Republicans have sabotaged this process every step of the way." Exactly. The question is, are they bluffing to get the best deal, or deliberately driving the car off the cliff in order to win the next election?

And the other question is, who's driving that Republican car? If you don't factor in the election, it's the Tea Party. But if you do factor in the election, and Mitch McConnell's claim that all he wants to do is destroy Obama's presidency, it could be both of them, doing the good cop–bad cop thing.

I do agree that this is a "defining moment," with lots of angles from which to look at it.

If you'd like to read the Alternet piece Cliff Schecter mentioned in the interview, it's here. Interesting discussion.

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Corporate profits continue but without jobs

Welcome to the new normal. The tax code helped get us into this situation so why not use it to push us out of it and add jobs?

Wages and salaries accounted for just 1 percent of economic growth in the first 18 months after economists declared that the recession had ended in June 2009, according to Sum and other Northeastern researchers.

In the same period after the 2001 recession, wages and salaries accounted for 15 percent. They were 50 percent after the 1991-92 recession and 25 percent after the 1981-82 recession.

Corporate profits, by contrast, accounted for an unprecedented 88 percent of economic growth during those first 18 months. That's compared with 53 percent after the 2001 recession, nothing after the 1991-92 recession and 28 percent after the 1981-82 recession.

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Cream - Strange Brew

It's been a chilly and wet week over in England for me this week but it's not much better in Paris. The upside of the week was some fantastic curry in Leicester, where they know how to do it right.

Everyone has been talking this week about both the Greek bailout (and eventual fault) and the US budget talks. I'm still not sure who Obama is trying to please because every day I hear more and more from lifelong Democrats who are disgusted with his negotiations. Good luck with that in 2012. Read the rest of this post...

Norway attacks leave at least 80 dead

It looks like it was a disturbed person from Norway who had a political agenda but we should know more in the coming days. Violence is very unusual in Norway so it's bound to have a significant impact on the country. The Guardian:

A Norwegian dressed as a police officer killed at least 80 people at an island retreat, police said early on Saturday. It took investigators several hours to begin to realise the full scope of the massacre, which followed an explosion in Oslo that killed seven and that police say was set off by the same suspect.

Police initially said about 10 people were killed at the camp on the island of Utøya, but some survivors said they thought the toll was much higher. Police director Øystein Mæland told reporters early on Saturday they had discovered many more victims.

"It's taken time to search the area. What we know now is that we can say that there are at least 80 killed at Utøya," Mæland said. "It goes without saying that this gives dimensions to this incident that are exceptional."

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