Another Fiscal Flop - NYTimes.com: But the proposal is not a balance of taxes and spending cuts. It doesn’t involve a single hard decision. It does little to control spending. It abandons all of the entitlement reform ideas that have been thrown around. It locks in low tax rates on families making less than around $450,000; it is simply impossible to avert catastrophe unless tax increases go below that line.
Far from laying the groundwork for future cooperation, it sentences the country to another few years of budget trench warfare. There will be a fight over drastic spending cuts known as sequestration, then over the debt limit and on and on.
The White House envisions a series of stages bringing us closer to fiscal sustainability. I hope that’s right. But if Congress couldn’t make a single tough decision under these circumstances, why should we think it’ll make any further down the road? More likely, there will just be more squabbling and brinkmanship, more posturing and punting, which would not only poison future budget talks but also prospects for immigration reform, tax reform, gun control and many other projects.