Kicking the bargain can down the road
by digby
Dday flagged this piece from The Hill today which may or may not be good news:
A bipartisan group of senators is negotiating a roughly $55 billion debt “down payment” that would temporarily turn off automatic spending cuts and buy Congress at least six months to work out a bigger deal.
The down payment would be linked to a deficit-reduction framework that would bind committees with jurisdiction over spending and taxes to an action plan, say sources familiar with the negotiations.
If a deal is reached and leaders sign off on it, Congress could approve the plan in a lame-duck session.
This is a kick the can move, which I think is better than anything else they might have on offer. But it's by no means the end of the story. There are a whole lot of details to be figured out and who knows what they'll agree to.
But as a general rule it's better not to do deals in the lame duck session. It rarely works out well for the folks. And just because they're setting up a "framework" doesn't mean they are bound to it, so let's see what it is. But this would at least give organizers some time to develop a plan to oppose this. As Ed Rendell said this morning the granny-starvers are already well on their way.
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