Time for Both Sides to Get Serious
The President and Speaker of the House have each provided some high quality theater, parading tired ideas with no chance of securing agreement to the deafening applause of their individual choirs.  Fine.  Politics is a spectacle.  So, we can accept this stage of the process.  But now it is time to roll up your sleeves in private and hammer out a deal.

Michael Gerson from the Washington Post notes that the president’s opening offer was simply “a repackaging of his previous budget, which got precisely zero votes in Congress…a calculated insult….  It was a policy joke, wrapped in a taunt, delivered with a puerile touch.  Obama supporters nodded approvingly, saying that he is finished “negotiating with himself.” But right now, he doesn’t seem to be negotiating with anyone.”

Andrew Taylor from the Associated Press reported today that the “GOP proposal itself revives a host of ideas from failed talks with Obama in the summer of 2011….  Monday’s Republican plan contains few specifics and anticipates that myriad details will have to be filled in next year in legislation overhauling the tax code and curbing the growth of benefit programs.”

Thanks for the riveting performances.  You have our attention.  Now get it done.  That is the American way.