The Case Against A “Grand Bargain”

salon.com — According to news reports, President Obama wants a “grand bargain” with the Republicans, who retain a majority in the House of Representatives even though in this year’s election more Americans voted for Democrats than for Republicans for Congress. The details of various “bipartisan” grand bargains vary, but most proposals, like the one proposed by the right-wing Republican Alan Simpson and the conservative Southern Democrat Erskine Bowles, the heads of the president’s failed deficit reduction commission, would trade modest Republican concessions on higher taxes on the rich for Democratic support for major cuts in Social Security, Medicare and other entitlements. Any such grand bargain would be a bad deal for mainstream Americans.

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