If you think that the committee is designed to fail, these are good members to that end. If you think that the entire exercise is a ploy to cut entitlements and lessen small-d democratic accountability, you can see that at work here as well. In that sense, ultimately the specific members of the committee don’t really matter.

If the rating agency’s entire argument was that the political system showed itself to be “less stable, less effective, and less predictable” during the debt limit debate, and that this failure of policymaking and institutional capability increases the chances of default, I don’t have much to argue about that. But, there’s a policy response for that. S&P could do exactly what Moody’s did and call for the debt limit to be extinguished, on the grounds that the legislative branch shouldn’t get to vote twice on funding, once when they appropriate it and another time when they decide whether or not the bill should be paid. If they really wanted to exert some influence on behalf of bondholders, they could have said that they would downgrade US debt further if the debt limit isn’t abolished within 90 days. Since the brinksmanship over the debt limit constitutes the biggest – perhaps the only – threat to paying off US sovereign debt, then the appropriate action for entities judging creditworthiness is to ask that the country in question eliminate the arcane and also dangerous practice.

But that’s not S&P’s only rationale.

Some Democrats took a look at the automatic cuts and thought they were tough, but probably better than a bad agreement that would slash the safety net and in all likelihood do little on revenues. After all, Medicaid, Social Security and programs for the poor were protected in the agreement, and Medicare would only see a provider haircut. And half of the automatic cuts would hit the Pentagon. What’s the forcing mechanism for the left?

Turns out, that would be the exchange subsidies from the Affordable Care Act:

Both Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are making some bold predictions about the Catfood Commission II and their roles in it. Pelosi said she wouldn’t appoint anyone to the committee who didn’t oppose benefit cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. And Reid tried his own dollar-for-dollar pledge by stating there must be a 1:1 ratio between tax and cut solutions on the committee.

Harry Reid is working on a debt limit proposal that would satisfy two key Republican demands. It would sustain the dollar-for-dollar relationship between spending cuts and an increase in the debt limit, and it would not include any revenue increases.

CNN has reported that Harry Reid is working on his own debt limit proposal that would cut deficits by $2.5 trillion total, include no revenue increases, and raise the debt limit by that same $2.5 trillion amount. Reid, Nancy Pelosi, the President and Vice President are scheduled to meet in the White House tonight starting at 6pm ET. Aides stressed that this would satisfy two key demands of the House GOP. It would have the dollar-for-dollar relationship between spending cuts and an increase in the debt limit; and it would not include revenue.

It sounds to me like the Democrats feel they need a counter-offer to what John Boehner will propose.

Why not take advantage of this situation—which has the added advantage of being the truth—and demand a clean vote, and only a clean vote, on the debt ceiling? Why not tell the American people that if we do this, and keep the money supply cheap and fluid, then government can do what it is supposed to do—what it can do: care for its people, create jobs in a time of need, repair aging infrastructure, research and develop new, greener energy sources (hint, hint—which will not only wean us off of expensive oil and nuclear power, but it could help build the economic engine that could power the US economy for the next decade), and provide a better life for every level of society?

We’re very close to a grand bargain endgame, it appears, where the White House will claim they got revenues and the Republicans will claim that the revenues are only theoretical. A lot rides on a “trigger” for additional revenues and entitlement cuts if goals are not reached. This allows lawmakers to defer tough questions on those topics with a fail-safe attached. In one rendering, the high-end Bush tax cuts would expire if the tax reform didn’t come off. But another piece has come into the discussion …

If Obama cannot be swayed, House Democrats will have the choice: do they want to remain in the minority for the foreseeable future? Or did they run for office for some reason other than personal enrichment in their post-Congress lobbying careers?

Maybe you think those leading Democrats aren’t being sincere about this. I actually am fine thinking that they are. Because this has now become the dividing line in American politics: one side wants to destroy the safety net, privatize everything, kill the unions, cut taxes for the rich and drown government in the bathtub. The other side doesn’t want to end Medicare. They don’t really want to expand it, they don’t even mind cutting it, hopefully to make it more efficient. They just don’t want to end it. Clearly you see how far to the right that dividing line has moved.