Greg Sargent at the Washington Post:
Here’s why the supercommittee is failing, in one sentence: Democrats wanted the rich to pay more in taxes towards deficit reduction, and Republicans wanted the rich to pay less in taxes towards deficit reduction.
Any news outlet that doesn’t convey this basic fact to readers and viewers with total clarity is obscuring, rather than illuminating, what actually happened here.
The Dem offer involved both sides making roughly equivalent concessions; the GOP offer didn’t. The main GOP concession — the additional revenues — would have come in exchange for Dems giving ground on two major fronts: On cuts to entitlements, and on making the Bush tax cuts permanent.Greg goes on to note that the NYT didn't bother mentioning this fact until the 25th paragraph of their story.
Putting aside whether the supercommittee failure matters at all, it’s plainly true that one side was willing to concede far more than the other to make a deal possible. And anyone who pretends otherwise is just part of the problem.
