The compromise position is already at hand; the Reid and Boehner plans have very few differences (though this is one that I hope gets ironed out). And anyway, Conrad would almost certainly be the co-chair of the “Super Congress” (if they just take the heads of the two budget committees, you’d have Conrad-Ryan), and he can trot out his Gang of Six plan at that point. But forcing it into the endgame of a debate where so much can go wrong seems just completely stupid to me.

Normally I consider myself pretty good at seeing through the political theater in Washington and figuring out what the maneuvering is really about. This time though, I’m really at a loss. What is going on appears to be less like a traditional PR political dance and more like a legislative mosh pit.

Keeping your own party in the dark while you conspire with the GOP to gut the New Deal is very hopey and changey!

What the Hell is Sen. Kent Conrad smoking? And why it is that he won’t share (c’mon, Senator, don’t bogart that doobie!)? In today’s Washington Post Sen. Conrad enables the hostage taking of the Republican Party by saying that he does not think that the two trillion in budget cuts that the Administration is talking about is enough.

There’s your real reason for the delay. A reconciliation bill would only need 50 votes. There’s nothing untoward about this; in fact, reconciliation was built for deficit reduction. Of course, the House would have to comply with this as well, but seeing that this makes any deal much easier to implement, I assume they’d go along with a reconciliation strategy. So this makes any bill harder for liberal Democrats to stop. Harder for Tea Party Republicans as well, but in the Senate that’s not big enough a faction.

If you think that this is a good time, with the initial jobless rate rising and the economy fragile, to suck hundreds of billions of dollars annually out of the economy, then sure, this may be good news. Tax increases are favorable to spending cuts from the standpoint of economic multipliers, and a balanced solution favorable to one weighted entirely on cuts. I hear that Conrad’s budget includes a millionaire’s surtax, which of all these ideas is the least obtrusive, because you’re dealing with money that is otherwise lying fallow in a trust fund.

As we get more clarity on the menu of options in the upcoming budget debate, we’re seeing a narrowing of differences between the two parties. The Republicans may not want to admit it, but they’ve given up on changing the structure of Medicare. You can be sure of this by looking at the proposal of the Republican Study Committee, the far-right rump in the House (and it’s much more than a rump, including 3/4 of the entire House GOP caucus), which created a list of demands for increasing the debt limit. Even THEIR plan doesn’t mess with Medicare.

The Gang of Six simply didn’t finish the job, and indeed, it was built to not finish the job, with Republicans desirous to drag out talks so Senate Democrats looked like they didn’t have a plan. In this sense it was no different than the Max Baucus-led Gang of Six on the health care law. So Conrad is becoming the Gang of One. He’s basically carrying Bowles-Simpson.

Washington’s modern elite are finally getting a grip on themselves.

Kent Conrad, the long-serving North Dakota Senator and chair of the Senate Budget Committee, plans to announce his retirement today, according to Chris Cillizza. This seems like a pickup for Republicans, though potential Democratic candidate Earl Pomeroy would at least have a track record of winning statewide and positive name ID.