Kicking the bargain can down the road

Kicking the bargain can down the road

by digby

Dday flagged this piece from The Hill today which may or may not be good news:

A bipartisan group of senators is negotiating a roughly $55 billion debt “down payment” that would temporarily turn off automatic spending cuts and buy Congress at least six months to work out a bigger deal.

The down payment would be linked to a deficit-reduction framework that would bind committees with jurisdiction over spending and taxes to an action plan, say sources familiar with the negotiations.

If a deal is reached and leaders sign off on it, Congress could approve the plan in a lame-duck session.

This is a kick the can move, which I think is better than anything else they might have on offer. But it’s by no means the end of the story. There are a whole lot of details to be figured out and who knows what they’ll agree to.

But as a general rule it’s better not to do deals in the lame duck session. It rarely works out well for the folks. And just because they’re setting up a “framework” doesn’t mean they are bound to it, so let’s see what it is. But this would at least give organizers some time to develop a plan to oppose this. As Ed Rendell said this morning the granny-starvers are already well on their way.

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