Ending a perilous stalemate, President Barack Obama announced agreement Sunday night with Republican congressional leaders on a compromise to avoid the nation's first-ever financial default. The deal would cut more than $2 trillion from federal spending over a decade.
Greg Sargent says it's a big win for Republicans:
GOP on verge of huge, unprecedented political victory
Anything can happen, but it apppears the GOP is on the verge of pulling off a political victory that may be unprecedented in American history. Republicans may succeed in using the threat of a potential outcome that they themselves acknowledged would lead to national catastrophe as leverage to extract enormous concessions from Democrats, without giving up anything of any significance in return.
Hooray! Now maybe we can see something different at the top of Memeorandum for a change! Y'know, after a few days of parsing and recriminating and speculating on who won or who lost or who's just being a sore loser or really ought to get on board and stop whining that everything isn't perfect.
Me, I'm not even going to bother figuring out what was in the "deal." These things always seem to turn out a lot worse than we thought a month after they happen. More at Memeorandum.
UPDATE - Krugman hates it, so it must be good. The New York Times hates it, too. Doubleplusgood!
I reiterate what I wrote earlier: we don't really know what's in this thing. Plus, all the people noting that promised future spending cuts aren't actually spending cuts at all are absolutely right. We're giving something up front for a promise of something later.
But, again, gotta wait and see.
