Michael Barone: All's Well That has Spending Cuts and Few Tax Increases.

Our Ultimate Goal for 2012---Perfectly Accomplished!!!

Boehner & McConnell might have painted the Obungler into a corner that do-nothing Hairy the Witless Senator Majority Bleeder also finds himself in.

It looks like the Senate will approve Reid's measure and that the two bills, framed in a way that makes compromise relatively easy, will be melded into one version that could be passed by bipartisan majorities of both houses in time to meet the supposedly hard deadline of Tuesday, Aug. 2.

But it's not certain everything will work out, and in the meantime nobody's very happy about the whole situation.

Democrats seem especially unhappy. They could have avoided the fight in the first place by raising the debt ceiling in the lame duck session in December, when they had large majorities in both houses of Congress.

But they decided not to. Reid's comments then suggested that he expected the issue to split the House Republicans, pitting the leadership against the 87 Tea Party-sympathizing freshmen. The leaders would have to agree to a tax increase in order to get a deal, with a party schism like the one that followed George H.W. Bush's agreement to a tax increase in 1990.

That didn't happen. Instead Reid abandoned his demand for a tax increase. The reason, I think, is that he hasn't had a 50-vote majority for a tax increase in the Senate, just as Senate Democrats haven't been able to pass a budget.

All of which left Barack Obama looking somewhat ridiculous when he called for more taxes in his televised speech Monday night. When you're trying to show you're leading and your followers have already gone off in another direction, you tend to look like something other than a leader.

This isn't the First and probably won't be the Last time the Obungler never got the memo everyone else inDC had already read and assimiliated.

Possibly this delusionary freak thought that Pelosi was still in charge and might get a bill that both Houses would have to sign before they would understand what's in it. The train's left the station, Barry, ands you'd better hail a cab and see if he'll take your baggage to the next stop.

In the meantime, the Dems are the ones whom the moron Hairy Weakest Reed saw caving underneith him as the GOP seems to have stolen several marches on its way to the 2012 election season---deep int the summer that was supposed to be another "Recovery Summer" led by the inimitable Joe Biden, almost dead in the world...., all last Summer to the titters and giggles of even his Demonrat supporters. The Washington Herald Examiner's Barone sums up the entire situation very well:

Obama has not shifted policies noticeably, but instead has seemed to position himself as a complainer on the sidelines, asking voters to call their congressman. He has presented no specific plan of his own. His chief of staff reports that he hasn't spoken at all to Boehner lately.

Just as he left the specifics of the stimulus package and Obamacare to congressional Democrats, so he has left the framing of an alternative to Harry Reid, whose Senate Democrats haven't passed a budget resolution in two years.

On Friday the Gallup poll showed Obama's job approval down to 40 percent, the lowest of his presidency. Voters are cross with everybody, but he has the most to lose.

Michael Barone as usual sees the light at the end of Obama's tunnel---but it is a fully-loaded freight train loaded with spending cuts rather than the tax boosts the foolish 43rd POTUS would have liked to have seen on that particular trainload...!!!