Okay, so it rolls down like this.
Last night and this morning, various papers, including the Washington Post, and New York Times, all went to press saying that the President is going to propose some kind of Grand Bargain on the Deficit to get the Debt Ceiling raised. Said deal would include four trillion (not two trillion) in cuts combined with one trillion in new revenues. Part of the cuts on the table would be entitlement spending from Social Security and Medicare, including the possibility of means teasting.
Again, all speculation and rumor. Actual details as to exactly what those cuts and revenues are are...frankly...sketchy.
St. John of Orange follows by saying "Yeah, we'll do the revenues, but only if we lower ALL tax rates." Which is something the President wanted to do anyway, given what he said at the State of the Union.
The White House quickly pushed back on the various stories, even though (I'm assuming) that they leaked them in the first place. (Trial balloon anyone?)
While AARP and some uber-Liberal groups are howling, you'll notice that so far...Congressional Democrats aren't (yet, at least not really). Which leads to the next theory, that this is really a stunt on the part of Democrats to appear reasonable to the public because everyone knows the GOP has shifted so far into looneyville that no deal on the deficit is possible.
And on top of everything else, the GOP is starting to sweat a little at the prospect of the President using the Constitution to ignore the Debt Ceiling Limit, because when asked in his Twitter Town Hall yesterday, the President didn't exactly rule it out.
