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An explosive mix of dysfunction, miscommunication, and misunderstandings inside and outside the White House led to the collapse of a historic spending and debt deal that President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner were on the verge of reaching last summer, according to revelations in author Bob Woodward's latest book. The book, "The Price of Politics," on sale Sept. 11, 2012, shows how close the president and the House speaker were to defying Washington odds and establishing a spending framework that included both new revenues and major changes to long-sacred entitlement programs. But at a critical juncture, with an agreement...

What happened? Obama and his advisers have cast the collapse of the talks as a republican failure. Boehner, unable to deliver, stepped away from the deal, simple as that. But interviews with most of the central players in those talks— some ofwhomwere granted anonymity to speak about the secret negotiations — as well as a review of meeting notes, e-mails and the negotiating proposals that changed hands, offer a more complicated picture of the collapse. Obama, nervous about how to defend the emerging agreement to his own democratic base, upped the ante in a way that made it more difficult...

Ok, someone please explain this one to us because we must be a little slow. Wasn't the whole thing with the debt ceiling hike such that no more Congressional melodramas would have to be inflicted upon the population until after Obama [won|lost] the 2012 elections? Because according to the one again exponentially increasing debt balance of the US Treasury (there is another $51 billion in debt/cash coming in next week), the total US treasury balance (subject to the ceiling) is $14.54 trillion (and $14.58 trillion for total), an increase of $20 billion overnight, the Treasury will hit its latest ceiling...

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), a top choice among Republicans for a deficit-cutting super-committee formed last week, on Sunday sought to tamp down expectations for the panel. “I don’t think a grand bargain is going to come out of this,” Mr. Ryan said on Fox News Sunday. He said that any deal for more than the $1.5 trillion in deficit-reduction over 10 years that the committee is charged with finding would depend on whether Democrats were willing to agree to overhaul entitlement programs. “I don’t see any agreement from the other side getting anywhere close to doing...

Religious Left Stews Over Debt Deal Posted By Mark D. Tooley On August 5, 2011 @ 12:27 am The Religious Left is displeased over the debt deal between President Obama and Congress for unforgivably omitting tax increases. They are also peeved over limits, if not outright cuts, to the growth of their beloved welfare, regulatory and entitlement state, which for the Religious Left is the virtual Kingdom of God on Earth. Some religious leftists were more incendiary than others. Emergent Church guru Brian McLaren, champion of religious postmodernism, typically rejects moral absolutes — except when denouncing conservatives. “A zealot faction...

The White House shot back Thursday at Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) claim that Republicans had called the president’s bluff in debt-ceiling negotiations. The administration issued a point-by-point rebuttal to Ryan’s op-ed yesterday in The Wall Street Journal, in which he characterized Republicans as having successfully stared down President Obama in the protracted fight over spending and the nation’s borrowing authority. Maybe the most bombastic claim Ryan made was that Republican leaders called Obama’s bluff by forcing him to accept legislation that included no revenue-raisers and raised the debt limit

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Here's a story from The Politico -- and I'm suspicious. I think every story from The Politico comes from the White House. No, I really do. You may interpret that as old Rush trying to be funny -- and I know, I know; I'm a funny guy -- but I'm saying this with all sincerity. I think most everything on the Politico comes from the White House. I think it's a steno pool. "The debt ceiling..." Well, here's the headline: "Debt Deal Could Endanger the Health Care Law," and, by the way, folks, I have a whole...

VAN SUSTEREN: Donald, the debt ceiling -- many Americans have heard back and forth between the two political parties that if it hadn't gotten raised, there'd be something catastrophic. Would it have been catastrophic to the American people? TRUMP: I don't think so. I think the Republicans tried hard, but they didn't make a good deal. They did very little cutting, but the worst thing of all -- and they could have had, and it was the one thing Obama wanted -- he wanted to bring it past the election because if they had this come due again before the...

Military pay raises, funding for veterans health care and the Post-9/11 GI Bill could be sacrificed to new fiscal realities as the result of the deal signed by President Obama on Tuesday to raise the federal debt ceiling, according to the Military Officers Association and veterans groups. The law requires the federal budget be cut $2.1 trillion over 10 years. The White House said it plans to cut $350 billion from the Defense Department budget (excluding war funding) over the next decade. Retired Air Force Col. Michael Hayden, the association's deputy director for government relations, said this means "everything is...

The debt deal that passed Congress yesterday fails to address the fiscal crisis. How does it fall short? No Balance: The plan fails to achieve a balanced budget, or even to lay out balance as a meaningful goal. Without this goal, deficit spending will continue and the American people will fail to coalesce behind the effort. Too Small: As advertised, the spending cuts in this package are less than one-third of the total projected deficit over the next ten years, and the deficits ten years from now will still be measured in the hundreds of billions. Revenues: The plan opens...

Free money creation to bail out America’s elite financial speculators, but not for Social Security or Medicare Only the “Crazies” Get the Bank Giveaway Right*snip* What has made the post-2008 crash most remarkable is not merely the delusion that the way to get rich is by debt leverage (unless you are a banker, that is). Most unique is the crash’s aftermath. This time around the bad debts have not been wiped off the books. There have indeed been the usual bankruptcies – but the bad lenders and speculators are being saved from loss by the government intervening to issue Treasury...

Leadership. Congressional leaders were forced to ask President Wonderful and his aides to leave the White House meeting so that they could get something done. The Hill reported: GOP aides and lawmakers, speaking on background, portrayed Boehner as the calm negotiator who repeatedly exasperated President Obama. Boehner last month asked the networks to televise his response to Obama’s address to the nation, a request which infuriated the White House, Republican sources said. On July 23, they claim, the White House called Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), telling her not to participate on a call with Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Harry...

Graduate students are going to take a big financial hit because of the debt deal, according to Michael Scherer's debt debate breakdown at Time. They currently aren't charged any interest on student loans until 6 months after graduation, but the debt deal cuts that federal subsidy. The costs for grad students will increase by more than $18 billion over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The change will take effect on loans made after July 1, 2012. Students in degree programs that take lengthy periods to complete (such as medicine, law and any doctoral programs) will be...

I’ve been seeing and hearing too many Tea Party members claiming that the debt deal is a win for the Tea Party. Be careful, the MSM is where this claim began and they are using it because they foresee a need to place blame in the not too distant future. The claim that the Tea Party won the debt debate is a talking point from the progressives. If you are claiming victory now, then you are also taking ownership of the future blame.

After weeks of intense wrangling between President Barack Obama and lawmakers on Capitol Hill, the Senate passed the debt ceiling bill Tuesday with a vote of 74-26. Here is a look at which lawmakers voted for or against the debt plan. Of the 74 lawmakers who voted in support of the bill in U.S. Senate, 28 of them are Republicans, 45 are Democrats and one Independent was included in the list: Akaka (D-HI), Alexander (R-TN), Barrasso (R-WY), Baucus (D-MT), Begich (D-AK), Bennet (D-CO), Bingaman (D-NM), Blumenthal (D-CT), Blunt (R-MO), Boozman (R-AR), Boxer (D-CA), Brown (D-OH), Brown (R-MA) Burr (R-NC), Cantwell...

President Obama wanted three things from the debt-ceiling fight: trillions in new borrowing authority, status quo on spending and no more drama before his shot at re-election. He got everything. [Snip] GOP leaders claim they cut the best deal possible in a divided government. [Snip] That’s an exaggeration. The bill would cut a minuscule $7 billion in 2012 and $3 billion total in 2013 - the only enforceable years. Meanwhile, the nation will continue to borrow at a rate of $100 billion a month. The second tranche of “cuts” will be left up to a new bipartisan committee tasked with...

Hush puppies and the Tea Party. The Republican run House of Representatives passed a debt limit plan last night 269-161. With Arizona Democrat Gabrielle Giffords returning from death's door to cast a yes vote. Good for her. You always think of these things together, right? No? Well, you should. Hush puppies, for those coming in late, were once the casual shoe of choice in the late 1950s. By the 1990s they were pretty much vanished, disappeared to the fashion twilight zone along with tri-corner hats and powdered white wigs for men. They sold somewhere in the neighborhood of a pathetic...

To see what the market thinks of the economic prospects for the economy look no farther than the 30 Year which just dropped below 4.00% and is trading at 3.99% right now. The market is effectively pricing in a major economic contraction, with long-end deflation now expected. Which means that Bernanke just got yet another carte blanche to proceed with the only thing  he know. And validating it is the equity market which at last check not only did not react favorably to the Senate vote, but has been fading all the news all day, and is now trading...

Remember yesterday’s GOP talking point about how “baseline budgeting” would make it virtually impossible for the Committee to impose tax hikes? Supposedly, because CBO is required to assume that the Bush tax cuts will lapse next year, the $3.5 trillion in new revenue that will come from that lapse is already part of the Committee’s “baseline.” In order for them to hit their target of $1.5 trillion in additional savings, they’d have to recommend tax hikes above and beyond that $3.5 trillion. Which, with an election coming up, they surely aren’t going to do.Just one problem: None of it is...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Despite the last-minute deal to lift the debt ceiling, the prospect of the United States losing its triple-A credit rating is still keeping Beijing and Hong Kong up at night. A possible downgrade is a difficult situation for China, said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Chicago-based financial services firm Mesirow Financial Holdings Inc. Swonk believes a downgrade of the U.S. credit rating is “still up for grabs” and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said as much Tuesday morning in an ABC interview. [Snip] Meantime, Chinese market participants are feeling uneasy about the possible downgrade and the weak dollar....