President's debt offer: risky but could be win-win
Jul-23-2011

It's hard to know which is more surprising: a Democratic president pushing historic cuts in spending, including Social Security and Medicare. Or a Republican-controlled House refusing to accept the deal and declare a huge victory for long-sought GOP goals.
Political orthodoxy has been turned on its head ever since President Barack Obama stepped up his call for a bipartisan "grand bargain" to raise the national debt ceiling and avert a default on U.S. obligations. The deal would include $4 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years, mainly through steep spending cuts but also including up to $1 trillion in new federal revenue.
Those are far bigger targets than typical budget negotiations. And the spending cuts would seem more appropriate for a Republican president than a Democrat.
Some pundits and political insiders say Republicans should leap at the offer. But there's a hitch: The new revenue - mainly from overhauling the tax code and lowering rates by eliminating or limiting a broad swath of loopholes, deductions and tax breaks - presumably would violate a no-net-tax-hike pledge that scores of Republican lawmakers have signed.
Mostly for that reason, House Republicans so far have rejected Obama's overture, despite the interest shown by Speaker John Boehner. Some pro-Republican analysts seem bewildered.
Obama's offer of big spending cuts would have "brutally fractured the Democratic Party," and congressional Republicans probably "will come to regret this missed opportunity," wrote David Brooks, a moderate-to-conservative columnist for The New York Times.

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