Grand Bargain Basement

Last week’s brief attempt at actual governing by both the White House and the GOP Congressional leadership in trying to “go big” on budget deficit and debt ceiling solutions dramatizes how dysfunctional Washington has become in six months of Tea Party madness.

After two years of Democratic control and wall-to-wall Republican naysaying, the American economy was teetering toward recovery but now has to be kept from going off a cliff, as the leadership of both parties acknowledge.

Why? John Boehner’s willingness to negotiate a Grand Bargain has been undermined by idiot ideologues in his own party, led by his own deputy Eric Cantor who makes Karl Rove look like a statesman.

The nation is careening toward a disastrous default because a moronic minority of newly elected anti-politicians has made a religious mission out of preserving the Bush tax cuts for billionaires while tearing down Medicare, Social Security and other safety nets for the most vulnerable Americans.

“No tax hikes” has become the mindless mantra for those who were elected to curb the excesses of government but have translated that into a mandate to destroy it.

“If not now, when?” the President asks Republican leaders but, for an answer, gets a Cantor monologue on going back to the patchwork compromises his minions had negotiated with the Vice President.

But Joe Biden has been working for the goals of Barack Obama, while Cantor has been undermining his own boss Boehner. If the government is to get past these distractions and start dealing with substantive issues again, the GOP has to clean out its bargain basement and get the House in working order again.

Update: The President turns up the heat on opponents about “massive, job-killing” tax hikes by emphasizing that any tax increases would only go into effect after 2013.

“No one is talking about raising taxes right now,” he says at a press conference. “I have bent over backwards to work with the Republicans that comes up with a formulation that doesn’t require them to vote sometime in the next month to increase taxes.”

For presidential hopefuls Like Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty, he has no patience: “For them to say we shouldn’t be raising the debt ceiling is irresponsible. They know better.”