johnnyba wrote:
"One side in the budget question is making impossible to compromise."

Well yes the Republican position on taxes does seem to have that effect. We are in such a whole that you really can't balance anything without raising taxed.
It's not just the GOP position on taxes.  We could get to balance- or at least begin reducing the debt- simply by cutting spending.  The GOP won't go along with cutting spending in certain areas.

There's a conservative poster at another with whom I have a similar understanding as whonew and I do here:  we'll thump each other 'round the head and insult away in between the substantive comments, and neither of us takes it personally (for long, anyway).  He's a "cut spending!  cut spending!" Norquist kind of conservative until you note that Defense needs a serious trim. Then it's "NO! NO! NO!"

Other Republicans in Congress have their own sacred cows that can't get cut, and when you add in their view that eliminating any redheaded eskimo tax breaks for donors and supporters counts as "raising taxes" in their view, you get a dysfunctional party whose policy prescriptions amount to "whine about the debt, but don't do anything about the debt."




“Nobody has a legitimate reason to fear a faithful interpretation of the Constitution, and nobody has any legitimate reason to fear effective and complete protection of civil rights." - Alan Gura