National security types get taken for a ride.

The language on taxes seems a bit more open to higher rates than in the past, and they actually call for defense spending cuts. But what makes the whole thing absurd is that they want all of this as part of “the resolution of the fiscal cliff by the end of the year”. That is, in the next two weeks.

Look, we aren’t going to get a Grand Bargain this month, or for that matter in the next couple of years; the GOP is still in total denial, insisting that revenue come from closing loopholes they won’t name and that there be big cuts in spending they won’t identify. The only way we could even get anything pretending to be a Grand Bargain would be for Obama to surrender completely, as he almost did in 2011; and a bargain like that wouldn’t even deliver deficit reduction, because you know that Republicans would end up reneging on the revenue parts.

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