With that budget they probably won't even get majority support. I don't see how McCaskill, Tester, Manchin,a nd Ben Nelson could possibly vote for that budget without getting hammered next year. And Bill Nelson probably also doesn't relish voting for a budget with $2 trillion in tax increases. That doesn't even get into the other more moderate Democrats who have not been entirely on board with such plans like Pryor, Landrieu, and Warner - all of whom will eventually have to run for re-election.

@NK,

The words, "this time it will be different" preceded every disaster in that time period. Until I see something different, I'm going to assume things have not changed at all.

The 2012 election will be about Obama's "reasonable" middle approach of raising taxes and cutting spending (in the year 2999) versus the "extremist" Republican that simply wants to roll back spending.

The GOP should be spending all their time talking about their "modest" spending cuts and leave the liberals to pitch their plans, without any help from the GOP.

Okay, here's a stab and a Grand Unified Theory for Republicans in 2012:
The extremes on the issue that matters are represented by Mitch "Social Issue Truce" Daniels and Rick "Truce on Moral Issues Means you Don't Understand What America's About" Santorum. The reason this is where the rubber meets the road is that winning both the White House and the Senate will required energizing both fiscal and social conservatives.
The 50-50 spending cut/tax increase proposal by the Dems for deficit reduction is exactly what one would expect from a party that has moral relativism at its very core. It is a functional expression of the moral equivalence that such relativism always attends. For this reason, it is fundamentally wrong.
In an important sense, the separation of "fiscal" and "moral" issues is misleading, artificial, an just plain wrong. How much money the government should collect under threat of imprisonment, and what it should spend that money on, are clearly moral questions. And Santorum is right to think that a "truce on moral issues" is political cowardice masquerading as fiscal responsibility. On the other hand, Daniels is right that preoccupation with divisive social issues will likely alienate some voters and thereby imperil the assembly of a coalition large enough to power the kind of transformation that is required to avoid financial ruin.
So, who is the right candidate to unseat Obama, provide coattails long enough to seize the Senate, and acquire in the process sufficient political capital to implement the reforms we need to swerve away from the cliff? Answer: the one who makes the most compelling argument about FISCAL matters in MORAL terms. Capture the green eyeshaders by speaking to their ISSUES; capture the social and religious conservatives by speaking in their LANGUAGE. And because budget questions are, ultimately, moral questions, this should not be that hard.

If Republicans were smart, they'd adopt the talking point of calling this the "Bernie Sanders Budget." Few leftists in DC make so unambiguous a villain as a self-declared Socialist.

Of course, if Republicans were smart, I probably wouldn't be an independent...

Please don't carry forward the false premise that COnrad is a "deficit hawk." He has been anything but.

As a North Dakotan he has been an embarrassment to us. Deficit hawk my butt.

Jenna: bankruptcy will force change whether the pols want it or not. My guess is that the Ds actually don't mind a bankruptcy because then they will be given a new chance to cause even more havoc with their mindless meddling.

Dr. H: agreed, the Ds are vulnerable in a number of different ways. Here's another one: we are going bankrupt. Short, accurate, and gets to the heart of the problem. Do you want 80% of something or 0% of everything? Who's the extremist now, the person who is trying to force us into bankruptcy?

Reheiler: good ideas but you may be overthinking it. People want somebody they trust and is a good communicator. They will even elect a socialist to be US president (just so long as he denies and obfuscates his real beliefs) if there are no other alternative candidates that meet this minimal threshold.

Reldim: they don't need 2 trillion in tax increases, just 1 trillion stretched over 5 years, but they're having a difficult time doing even that since they just delayed their budget another week. Remember, the Ds position is that they want a 2 trillion raise in the cap and are willing to meet that figure using a 50/50 split in tax increases/spending cuts.

It should be easy to reach that $200 billion in spending cuts just by promising to end the three wars and sending all of the troops home. And they don't even have to put it in law -- they can just make promises -- because no R is going to dare call the Ds on that bluff, so the Ds do have a few cards they can still play without looking like complete incompetents.

The republicans know that taxes will go up. So they propose all spending cuts and no tax increases. The Dems know that spending will have to be cut. So they demand a debt limit increase without any spending cuts. These are irresponsible negotiating tactics by unprincipled ideologues posturing for the press and their core supporters, instead of actually governing.

Now the Dems will recommend 50% tax increases and 50% spending cuts. The Republicans will say no taxes. The center sane 6 or 7 people left in Washington will then say "let's split the difference, at the 3 to 1 mix the deficit commission recommended to begin with". Both parties will throw hissy fits at the prospect. Then they will finally agree on that formula, and vote to raise the debt limit.

And nobody will notice that while they fought tooth and nail over composition they ignored the actual vital question, scale, and that they only moved a tenth of the distance they need to, to actually make any appeciable impact on the problem. They will say it is trillions, but those trillions will be over 10 years or more, and back weighted, and in the first two years the total will be more like $100-200 billion, and the deficit will remain wide open.

It is all predictable, and hereby predicted, and stupid beyond words.

Please get serious, people. 3 to 1 is fine, but the scale needs to be $500 billion in the first year.

And the incompetent GOP makes no use of the study of IMF/country bankruptcies by Harvard economists...that found that countries that tried to work their way out of bankruptcy using increased taxes...failed. The only way that history has shown will work is to cut spending. In other words - there is a large, large club to beat Democrats and the media over the head w/...and our side can't seem to grasp it - much less use it.

Coupled that with a statement that increased taxes are only used by politicians and government to buy power and control over people...which is a winning and easily grasped concept...and there's no reason for the GOP/conservatives to be remotely losing politically.

Of course, these PR/political battles should have been fought over the past three years...setting up the win. Instead, we're playing catch-up to a bunch of illogical idiots. Not sure what that says about our politicians. Pretty sure it means that they are even bigger idiots.

Reheiler: Ditto!

Social and fiscal issues are two sides of the same coin. Every social problem carries a financial cost, and a financial crisis of mismanagement of our money is a moral outrage.

It should not be that hard to find a TRUE conservative in a party that is supposedly conservative, if it WAS, truly, a conservative party.

Answer: Herman Cain.

If he's still in the race a few months before primary season, I'll change my registration to be entitled to vote. Don't worry - it'd get changed back the day after!

Everyone else in that race merely is pretending to understand the fiscal and moral situation we are in.

MikeB: I didn't know William F. Buckley was a judge. I thought he was a private citizen.

If you cannot fathom that difference, next time you sit on the loo, squeeze a bit harder. Your brain might just make an appearance!

Do you know what Mrs. Buckley's intentions were? And if they were stated clearly?

And as you clearly don't understand, 75 Catholic Priests -- a smidgen of the total -- are not anyone's "Lord and Savior". Except, of course, to "regressives" like yourself, who pray at the pagan altar of human superiority.

Too bad for you that you lost what you perceive to be "life's lottery", and you came up "snake eyes" in the intelligence department.