Obama's new debt deal

It's annoying to see the coverage of how Obama's proposed debt deal is "so liberal" and "clearly just for campaigning". Then we continue to hear more about how all the politicians in Washington can never compromise on anything. But is that really true?

As I've previously said, if you want to take a very basic ideological divide of how to close a budget deficit, the purely conservative approach would be all spending cuts, and the purely liberal side would be all tax increases. The compromise would be somewhere in the middle, which happened in all previous deficit deals under Clinton, Bush I, Reagan, etc.

Here's Obama's plan:

Most of it (2/3) is spending cuts. And this is just what he's going into negotiations with; he's not threatening to veto any plan that tilts even more towards cuts over revenues.

Meanwhile the Republicans claim they're the party most concerned about the deficit, yet they will filibuster any new revenues. In fact, their proposed "debt" plan from Paul Ryan actually *cuts* taxes.

I do believe Obama's plan has no chance of passing Congress. But that's not because it's some unreasonable and extreme left-wing plan. And it's not because all politicians in Washington are unwilling to ever compromise. It's only because the *Republicans* in Washington are unwilling to compromise. I don't know how you could see it any other way; you can support their rigidity, but you can't deny it. And if they're unwilling to accept a single penny of new taxes to fix the deficit, you have to wonder if they really think the deficit is much of a problem. They're treating it more like an excuse to just do things they'd want to do anyway.