The main way that the US can insulate itself from the crisis in Europe is through continuing the fiscal state of emergency in the country, as the only ballast for growth. Unfortunately, we have a dysfunctional Congress, so the only way to realistically do this is to not slip backwards and turn fiscal policy negative by allowing several measures to expire at the end of 2012.

I guess I’ve been remiss in writing about the American Jobs Act (AJA), but then I haven’t written anything about Libyan admission into the United Nations, either, which is a policy I’m sure somebody somewhere agrees with, but which also isn’t going to happen.

If the American Jobs Act were just the bill described last night – one that would create millions of jobs and serve many of the country’s needs – that would be fine. But it’s not just that bill. The President was quick to address the idea that the bill would be “fully paid for,” and that he would lay out those items next week. Originally, the plan was to include the pay-fors in last night’s speech. The President was informed that this would not be a great idea and would substantially deflate progressives who generally liked the speech. So those items will come out “a week from Monday,” on September 19, according to the speech. But the President couldn’t help himself, and in one overlooked portion of the speech, he laid out what amounts to the grand bargain.

There were no real surprises among the choices made by John Boehner and Mitch McConnell for the Catfood Commission II. It’s perhaps interesting to note that Paul Ryan didn’t make the cut, but I guess Boehner figured that he’s toxic and therefore not a good face to put on the committee. Instead, Boehner picked two heads of other committees with jurisdiction over health programs and taxes, and made the chair a member of the original Catfood Commission as well as the House Leadership.

The discussions over pairing an increase in the debt limit with austerity budgeting took a turn into the stratosphere this morning, with a series of articles detailing President Obama’s offer, to be presented to Congressional leaders today, of a broader deficit reduction plan than previously discussed, with major cuts to all areas of government and a repeal of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2%. This is the grand bargain, the “something big” deal that the President has clearly favored since perhaps before he entered office, when he set up a fiscal responsibility summit and invited Pete Peterson to keynote it.

There’s an old Bill Cosby routine, called “Shop”, on the album Why Is There Air? that is quite apposite to the events of the past two days. In it, Cosby describes how his junior-high-school shop teacher tricked the guilty party into tacitly confessing to having put a bullet in the shop class furnace — and without directly accusing the kid or even so much as saying his name. With the right-wing attacks on Pima County, Arizona Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, we’re seeing something rather similar play out.

A statement from individuals across the ideological spectrum that there is simply no place in our federal budget for wasteful, ineffective spending that is basically just corporate welfare. This is what good trans-partisanship looks like. And it is remarkably rare.

I’m surprised it took three whole days for Senate Republicans to break their earmark pledge.

Senator Richard Lugar wants the Senate to call his own party’s bluff on the new START arms reduction treaty, bringing it up for a vote in the lame duck session. He stood with John Kerry and Hillary Clinton yesterday, rebuking Senate Republicans for their stall tactics.

Basically, the action in the next two years will be in the executive branch federal agencies, all of which will be under constant threat of defunding and harassment from the GOP.

But bipartisanship, in the Congress? Fuhgettaboutit.