Ten months, no new taxes, and one debt ceiling crisis later, Cantor said the same thing last week in response to the president's jobs bill: "I sure hope that the president is not suggesting that we pay for his proposals with a massive tax increase at the end of 2012 on job creators that we're actually counting on to reduce unemployment." Given that 44 percent of the nation's unemployed have been without work for at least six months and more Americans are living below the poverty line than at any time in the last 50 years, one marvels at Cantor's faith in the truant "job creators" as well as his forbearance in the face of human misery. To the jobless, he is counseling the patience of Job.

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Bows to Boehner: I can tell you what any progressive who has been paying attention thought, "Oh boy, here we go again."

President Obama has now changed the day of his address to Congress to accommodate the Republicans. They were having a GOP presidential debate on the original date he picked. So, Boehner told him to move his speech. He is the president for Christ's sake. Of course, they should have accommodated him, not the other way around. But as usual, President Obama bowed.

So, this leads to the eternal question of whether Obama is just weak or if he is a brilliant strategist who has been playing rope-a-dope all along. I am so silly that I still had hope. My hope this morning was that Obama was laying a trap for the Republicans. He picks a day for his speech that is the same as the GOP debate. Then if Boehner says he won't let him give the speech on that day, he seems so petty and harsh.

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Except, the Dow Jones industrial average has been dropping for eight straight days, and the sell-off accelerated as it became clear that the deal was done. How ironic!

But it's almost certainly wrong to attribute Tuesday's big sell-off, as some commentators would like us to believe, to the sudden realization that a fiscal contraction is sure to retard future economic growth. By Tuesday, investors had already figured out that there was going to be a deal -- that scenario, as the market-watchers like to say, was already "priced in." What they didn't know, and what has been fueling negative investor sentiment all week, was how bad the numbers on manufacturing activity and consumer spending were going to be. There has been almost no good news in the economic data for several months now. Each additional negative piece of data solidifies a bleak narrative: The economy has stalled.

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So there will be no disastrous default. But there is also no joy in liberal Mudville. While some conservatives are grumping their dismay that all their hostage demands weren't met, or that cuts in defense spending are too high, the truth of the tale can be found easily in the gamut of partisan reaction.

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Speaker of the House John Boehner should be proud of himself. He's had quite a week. On Wednesday Boehner had to delay bringing the first version of his plan to the House floor after his caucus erupted in dismay at a Congressional Budget Office analysis that declared the bill would not deliver the spending cuts originally claimed by the Speaker. On Thursday, after nearly two hours of debate, Boehner was forced to postpone a scheduled vote when it became clear that his measure would not pass. And then finally, on Friday, with only four days remaining before the August 2nd debt ceiling deadline, Boehner orchestrated passage of a bill that has no chance of becoming law.

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As I write these words, the U.S. House of Representatives is debating the appropriate name for a post office in Pasadena, Calif. Meanwhile, C-SPAN is running a crawl at the bottom of the screen that reads "Final Vote on Speaker Boehner's Plan to Raise Debt Ceiling Postponed."

And so, ludicrously, is history made. The Republican Party is on the cusp of one of the greatest self-inflicted disasters since a crack cadre of two-bit bumblers broke into the Watergate Hotel. Early Thursday evening, John Boehner could not count on enough Republican votes to pass his own debt ceiling bill. Tweets from news reporters at the Capitol reported that the speaker was summoning recalcitrant representatives to his office and presumably using every means at his disposal to switch their votes from no to yes, but on Thursday he failed.

The House Rules Committee will meet Friday morning to consider "tweaks" to the bill that might make it more palatable to conservatives. But even if a new bill passes, instransigent House Republicans are still doing their best to hand  President Obama one of the biggest victories of his term.

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House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the party’s vote counter, began his talk by showing a clip from the movie, "The Town", trying to forge a sense of unity among the independent-minded caucus.

One character asks his friend: "I need your help. I can’t tell you what it is. You can never ask me about it later."

"Whose car are we gonna take," the character says.

Yeah! Guys helping each other out! Unity! Here's the actual scene, though, with an important line that the Post weirdly left out:

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The first stage of the Boehner "Two Step Plan to Be Mean to Obama" promises "immediate" cuts of $1.2 trillion. Harry Reid's counter-proposal proposes $2.7 trillion in reductions, a total big enough to make most Democrats gulp at the prospect of the poor, sick and elderly suddenly shoved onto the street.

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House Speaker John Boehner's new budget proposal would require deep cuts in the years immediately ahead in Social Security and Medicare benefits for current retirees, the repeal of health reform's coverage expansions, or wholesale evisceration of basic assistance programs for vulnerable Americans.

The plan is, thus, tantamount to a form of "class warfare." If enacted, it could well produce the greatest increase in poverty and hardship produced by any law in modern U.S. history.

I will take a closer look at how both the Reid and Boehner plans will impact ordinary Americans tomorrow morning. But for now, with Greenstein's denunciation ringing in your ears, consider this: A significant number of House Republicans oppose the Boehner plan because it does not go far enough.

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Meanwhile, John Boehner, the speaker of the House, gave his five-step "two-step" plan to famous shouty radio guy Rush Limbaugh, before he showed it to his own conference. (Of course, his conference is full of morons and extremists, many of whom wouldn't have known what to think about Boehner's plan until Uncle Rush explained it, so this was more shrewd than disrespectful.)

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You see, it's all about Obama. It's not about grand bargains or complex efforts to devise a long-term bipartisan plan that will bring down the deficit without further endangering the economy and savaging the safety net. It's not about maintaining the full faith and credit of the United States. It's not about the difficulty of finding grounds for reasonable compromise. It's all about Obama.

And it makes sense. House Republicans were getting some bad press for their reckless willingness to extract huge concessions by holding the debt ceiling and the nation's credit-worthiness hostage. Lots of polling indicates that, outside of the Republican base, most Americans support compromise, and a "balanced" approach to deficit reduction that includes revenue increases as well as spending cuts. But no matter what Obama offered the GOP, Boehner could not agree to it, because any kind of a deal with the president would have the unbearable downside of making Obama look like a presidential problem-solver. And that would be an abomination.

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This isn't just me, right? If you have a big professional-looking document that says "TWO-STEP APPROACH" at the top, there should just be two steps listed, right? Who will hold John Boehner accountable for his crimes against numbers?

[Yes, this is all I have to say about the horrible nightmare that is the debt ceiling argument and America's forthcoming "The Road"-style age of "austerity." Go read Andrew Leonard if you want insightful and substantive and "actually knows what he's talking about" commentary!]

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All weekend long, legislators and pundits made repeated references to the pressing necessity of cobbling together some semblance of a deal "before the Asian markets open." Whether or not this was true was impossible to say, but here's what we know: as Japan's stock market prepared to open at 8 p.m. Eastern time, nothing remotely close to an agreement existed. If the eyes of the world are on us, then the mouths of the world are gaping in astonishment.

The New York Times reports that Senate Majority leader Harry Reid is putting together a package supposedly worth $2.5 trillion of cuts, but they're sure to be unacceptable to Republicans -- a whopping $1 trillion is simply assumed to come from winding down the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. That's not the kind of entitlement-slashing that the GOP is salivating for.

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The timing was significant. If Boehner had bailed on negotiations while markets were open, the Dow would have plummeted -- and with good reason. There are very few people outside of the House Republican caucus who can understand why in the world Boehner would reject the offer Obama had put on the table.

Moments later, President Obama gave a press conference, and expressed, in no uncertain terms, his very irritated disbelief that the Republicans were walking away from a deal that he characterized as "extraordinarily fair" -- a deal that required him "to take a lot of heat from his own party," a deal that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi "were very unhappy with."

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"There is no deal. There is no agreement in private" with Democrats, Boehner told reporters at the Capitol as the Senate was voting on a bill pushed through the House by majority Republicans which is called "cap, cut and balance" in pursuit of an accommodation on raising the government's debt limit. The legislation was killed in the Democratic-dominated Senate on a procedural vote by a 51-46 margin.

Treasury's borrowing authority expires Aug. 2, and the government will be facing default at that time in the absence of legislation to raise the debt limit.

A testy Boehner said at one point that "at the end of the day, we have a spending problem," blaming that on Democrats and then abruptly declaring an end to his news conference.

Boehner's appearance came after days of partisan wrangling and the Senate vote on GOP-backed legislation tying an increase in borrowing authority to a substantial program of spending cuts, including restraints on Social Security and Medicare.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor called on Democrats to produce their own plan.

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So here's a little translation guide to help readers get some clarity.

What they say:

Michele Bachmann, explaining the only circumstances under which she would vote for raising the debt ceiling.

"They'd have to cut an enormous amount, including they would have to defund Obamacare," she said on Fox News in response to a question about the circumstances under which she'd vote to raise the debt ceiling. "Because that's the largest entitlement in the history of the country."

What she means:

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But is there anyone inside or outside Washington who was surprised at this development, save perhaps NBC's Chuck Todd, who was excitedly tweeting his belief last Friday that "there's real momentum for a big deal"? The inevitability of a severe backlash from House Republicans against any such compromise was entirely predictable.

In fact, I predicted it, last Thursday:

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Aides say the time that Obama and Boehner are spending on the course at Joint Base Andrews on Saturday could help improve a relationship that's respectful, but hardly close.

But 18 holes probably won't give them enough time to hash out their policy differences on everything from the debt to the U.S. military involvement in Libya.

"Spending a number of hours together in that kind of environment I think can only help improve the chances of bipartisan cooperation," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

"It certainly can't hurt it -- unless someone wins really big," he added.

Boehner is considered one of Washington's best golfers. Obama is not in that league.

The outing comes against the backdrop of negotiations between the White House and Congress over a long-term deficit reduction plan that will set the stage for increasing the amount of money the government can borrow.

Republicans have insisted on significant cuts of about $2 trillion over 10 years or 12 years before agreeing to increase the current $14.3 debt ceiling, which the government says it will surpass Aug. 2.

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White House spokesman Jay Carney said Thursday that Boehner's views "stand in contrast to the views he expressed in 1999 when he called the War Powers Act 'constitutionally suspect,' and warned Congress to 'resist the temptation to take any action that would do further damage to the institution of the presidency.'"

Boehner rejected Obama's contention that U.S. forces face no hostilities in Libya, saying the argument doesn't "pass the straight-face test," and threatened to cut off funds for the operation, with possible House action next week. His spokesman, Brendan Buck, dismissed Carney's reference to a "decade-old statement."

"As speaker, it is Boehner's responsibility to see that the law is followed, whether or not he agrees with it," Buck said.

Anger in Congress has been growing over the administration's refusal to seek congressional authorization for the military intervention. In response, the administration sent to Capitol Hill a report saying that because the U.S. is in a supporting role in the NATO-led bombing mission, American forces are not facing the "hostilities" that would require the president to seek such approval under the War Powers Resolution.

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"And with the exception of tax hikes -- which will destroy jobs -- everything is on the table."

Never mind the fact that "trillions of dollars of cuts" in any accelerated time frame would "destroy jobs" much more efficiently than ending Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy. And it's not even worth pointing out, again, the Republican demagoguery that portrays the statutory end of the Bush tax cuts as wild tax hikes. The speech is most useful in its demonstration of classic Washington politician projectionism: Boehner did not mention under what time frame the cuts should take place nor did he specify where exactly the cuts should come. So who, precisely, is punting the tough questions to the future?

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