Huzzah! Ryan gives up on Grand Bargain. (Wants to concentrate on cutting entitlements)
by digby
This is actually kind of funny:
A new round of budget negotiations starting next week should focus more narrowly on replacing automatic spending cuts rather than attempt to reach an elusive "grand bargain," House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan said on Thursday.
Ryan told Reuters in an interview that reduced expectations could make the talks more successful than past efforts, such as the failure of the 2011 "supercommittee" to find $1.2 trillion in savings.
"My hope is that it has a better chance because we'll set more rational expectations of what we're setting out to achieve," said Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican.
"If we focused on doing some big grand bargain, like those prior efforts ... then I don't think we'll be successful because we'll focus on our differences. Each party will demand that the other compromises a core principle and then we'll get nothing done."
Woo Hoo! Happy days are here again, the skies above are clear ...
Oh wait:
Ryan, who will lead Republicans on the 29-member negotiating panel that convenes on October 30, said there is a better chance of finding common ground with Democrats on "smarter" spending cuts to replace the across-the-board reductions to discretionary spending. He said these include reductions and reforms to expensive federal benefits programs known as entitlements, such as Social Security, Medicare and some farm subsidy programs.
Looks like the "Grand Bargain" brand has been a little bit damaged ...
The good news for Ryan is that at least one member of President Obama's budget advisory team agrees with him. The bad news is that Harry Reid doesn't.
So far, the Democrats are holding strong for a tiny bit of chump change from millionaires so they can pretend any deal is "balanced" and so far the Republicans are holding out the sequester cuts as their only offer. Unfortunately, judging from the defensive tone among the Democrats right now, I'm afraid that if the Obamacare "crisis" continues much longer, the Faintheart Caucus will be aching for some "deal" they can cut with the Republicans to distance themselves from their own party. Their desire to be "grown-ups" is reflexive, so it's always possible they'll see any tiny dip in the polls (if there is one) as a sign they need to capitulate.
Stay tuned.
Update: Harry Reid agrees there's not going to be a grand bargain. But he also says there will be no cuts to SS and Medicare in this round.
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