I told you so!

As I said late last year, the new tea-party led Republican congress would be hard to deal with and they have completely proven me right in this debt ceiling fight.

Before I go on, let's clear the air regarding the debt ceiling. This isn't to raise money for things that we may or may not appropriate (purchase) in the future, as I believe most Americans understand it. The debt ceiling is the amount of money we need to approve to pay the bills Congress has already SPENT, whether it be on the payroll tax cut or the bridge being rebuilt in your town.

Various news outlets are reporting that President Obama and Republican Speaker Boehner hammered out a deal with roughly $4 trillion, yes that's a T, trillion dollars worth of spending cuts in exchange for a couple hundred billion dollars worth of tax increases, and most of those tax "increases" would be getting rid of distorting tax exemptions for things like yacht depreciation, corporate jet subsidies, oil subsidies which started back when oil drilling was in its infancy and other big agriculture subsidies that are either outdated or no longer needed. Sounds like a pretty good deal for Republicans, right? Three dollars in spending cuts for roughly every 0.80 cents in revenue - not bad.

But the tea party led by Rep. Eric Cantor won't have it. Apparently they won't sign on to ANY tax increases, even though these various corporate subsidies are exactly the kind of "waste" they bitch and moan about every year.

And conservative columnists David Brooks and Ross Douthat are calling congressional Republicans on their bullshit that this is anything but a deal that is favorable to them. These guys are holding the entire United States' economy hostage because they think they deserve 100% of what they want at the negotiating table, when they hold a slim majority of one house of one branch of government.

Nobody wins if the U.S. defaults on its debt (the first time in its history), but I would love to see what would happen to Republicans if they followed the right wing of their base into economic oblivion. We'd all be screwed, but we'd see their true colors concerning deficits and debt which is to say, they'd rather keep some random tax subsidies for the ultra-rich than cut $4 trillion dollars worth of spending, including major entitlement reform.