House Speaker John Boehner's pre-written denunciation of President Obama's prime time speech Monday night confirms that there is not going to be any Grand Bargain in terms of dealing with the debt ceiling issue – and if Congressional Republicans get there way we'll be going through this all over again in a year's time.
It's been very difficult (sometimes tedious) following this D.C. battle, because nothing is ever written down and the numbers of how severe the spending cuts on American government seem to change on a daily basis, but we do now have two competing plans – both of which are big winners for Republicans.
The Boehner plan would raise the debt ceiling until early next year and demands another vote on a balanced-budget amendment, which was just rejected by the Senate last week. It would have a $1 trillion worth of cuts up front and would create a new 12-member congressional committee to recommend deeper cuts in the future.
And we'd come right back to this impasse in a year's time.
. And then we would do this all over again. Psyched?
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has his own plan that would cut $2.7 billion and raises no new revenues, a plan that the NY Times editorial page describes as "awful."
This article appears in Jul 21-27, 2011.