I am reminded of the cartoon where Charlie Brown goes to kick the football and then Lucy moves it. And he does this over and over again. I suspect that we are about to see this happen given the latest status of the debt ceiling/government shutdown negotiations.
Right now all eyes on the Senate where negotiations are currently taking place between Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans. Presumably, as negotiations between the President and John Boehner have failed, the hope is that an agreement can be reached between Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats so that the government can be reopened and the debt ceiling raised.
I don't have a good feeling about any agreement that will be reached between Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats. The proposals being discussed have a number of provisions which many Democrats, including me, are unhappy with.
Durbin said Democrats are also unhappy with the adjustments proposed to the new health-care law — which include a delay in a tax on medical devices and new auditing of federal subsidies for individuals who purchase health insurance through the program . . .
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
In addition, also included in a proposal Senate Republicans is a plan to
fund federal agencies for six months at current spending levels. It would maintain the deep automatic cuts known as the sequester but give agency officials flexibility to decide where the cuts should fall.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/....
For all of the discussion about how moderate Senator Collins is she, and every one of the Senate Republicans, supported the filibuster of the clean debt ceiling increase bill considered today in the U.S. Senate.
Even if an agreement is reached between Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans, there is no guarantee that enough House Republicans will vote in favor of any Senate agreement so that it will pass the House. John Boehner has shown that he has little control over his caucus so I am not optimistic that he will be able to deliver the votes even if he agrees to a proposal negotiated by Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans.
Should an agreement reached by Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans fail in the House, I suspect that Boehner and the Republicans will be demanding even more Democratic concessions in order to get enough Republicans to vote for it so that it will pass the House. And Democrats, not wanting to be blamed for a default, will be facing a lot of pressure from the media and the public to vote for it, no matter who bad the proposal is.
I suspect that the final product will be more to the Republicans' liking than our liking. And that the Democrats will repeat the mistake they made the last time (remember Boehner said he got 98% of what he wanted). Now maybe this time it won't be 98%, but we should make sure that it should not even be close to 50%. We won the election. The government shutdown and potential for default is hurting the Republican Party. The Democrats should continue to hang tough and not give in so that the final bill does not give the Republicans what they want.
Otherwise, the lesson the Republicans will learn is that despite the President's rhetoric, their strategy has worked.