The Deal

David Dayen writes The Ugly, the Ugly, and the Ugly: A Look at the 2011 Funding Deal. "Therefore, this deal inked late last night cut $58.5 billion from the level of McCaskill-Sessions. This equals all of the tax advantages that didn’t extend current law, outside of the business expensing provisions, in the December 2010 tax cut deal. The entire stimulus is gone. Incidentally, John Boehner made an additional point – because the cuts to agency appropriations end up setting a new baseline and magnifying over time, the total impact of cuts in this bill is $500 billion over the next decade. This comes at a time of 8.8% unemployment, when many economists believe additional fiscal stimulus is needed to prop up a nascent and still-fragile recovery. But Washington has gone into austerity mode. You had a Democratic President last night touting the “largest annual spending cut in our history,” as if that were something of which to be proud. Yet it’s undeniable that this cut sets the country backwards and puts it on bad footing for the additional bigger spending fights ahead"

Ezra Klein writes 2011 is not 1995 "The substance of this deal is bad. But the way Democrats are selling it makes it much, much worse."

Robert Reich puts it in schoolyard terms, Why the Right-Wing Bullies Will Hold The Nation Hostage Again and Again. "It is impossible to fight bullies merely by saying they’re going too far."

Here are Lessons in Negotiations from Marian Anderson and Eleanor Roosevelt

Mathew Yglesias explains how the Debt Ceiling and Shutdown fights will have different dynamics.