Budget Bill Defeat Is Lesson in Difficulty of Compromise

By JONATHAN WEISMAN
NYT

WASHINGTON — As the House moved toward a vote last week on a bipartisan budget plan modeled on the deficit reduction blueprint of a White House commission, Washington’s conservative and liberal influence machines swung into action.

Within hours, Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform joined Heritage Action for America, the Club for Growth, the Heritage Foundation and assorted conservative bloggers in coming out hard against the plan as an unacceptable tax increase. On the left, the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, and research groups like the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities denounced the effort as a sham, disguised as the Bowles-Simpson commission report but tilted to the right.

But the plan that its sponsors, Representatives Steven C. LaTourette, Republican of Ohio, and Jim Cooper, Democrat of Tennessee, swore would get at least 100 votes across party lines got just 38, and the prospects for compromise on the nation’s yawning deficit took a major step backward.

“There are only two things in the middle of the road,” said Mr. Cooper, “yellow lines and dead possums.”

(More here.)