The Democrats have come up with a counteroffer:
As they opened negotiations with Republicans over budget cuts, the White House and Congressional Democrats on Thursday offered to trim an additional $6.5 billion from current spending, a figure far short of the Republican goal of cutting agency budgets by $61 billion.
The $6.5 billion isn’t painless but it isn’t anything we can’t live with. The plan in the Senate is to introduce two bills (the Democrats’ and the House version) and demonstrate that neither of them have any chance of passing.
The Senate vote could be particularly helpful, aides said, in showing the 87 new Republican members of the House that the $61 billion in cuts cannot survive, giving the leadership leverage in pushing for a compromise that can pass.
But the House Republicans have a strategy to deal with that.
Representative Eric Cantor, a Virginia Republican and the majority leader, said Thursday that if lawmakers were unable to reach a deal, House Republicans would continue to pursue cuts through temporary budget bills.
“Our intention is to continue to go forward reducing spending at the rate of $2 billion a week until we can see some signal from the Senate that they are serious about cutting spending,” Mr. Cantor said.
So, it will be a series of continuing resolutions backed up by a series of threats to shut down the government if each new resolution doesn’t contain at least $2 billion more in cuts. The House can play that game all year long for all they care. They’ll consider it a successful effort to keep their promises.
So, how long do we want to play this game before we let them shut down the government? When will they get the maximum blame?
