Budget

MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle perpetuated the liberal line of Republican obstinacy over the debt ceiling on Tuesday's Morning Joe using a poor analogy to home buying. "Did you ever compromise or negotiate on the price with the then owner of the home?" asked Barnicle. [VIDEO BELOW THE FOLD]

Conservative Republicans are divorced from reality while Democrats are governed by the facts. That's the take Time's Alex Altman has on how the two congressional parties are addressing the looming debt ceiling deadline in his July 19 Swampland blog post, "The Fact Gap: Can Republicans Overcome Their Alternate Reality to Strike A Debt Deal?":

With growing frustration towards President Obama and certain members of congress for their lackadaisical approach in balancing the budget and reducing spending, many people are beginning to think they could do a better job than our country's leaders. Using data collected by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, American Public Media and the Woodrow Wilson Center put together an…

The OK Corral in Tombstone, Ariz., was where Doc Holliday and Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan Earp fought the Clantons and McLaurys on Oct. 26, 1881. At the end of that 30-second showdown, Virgil and Morgan Earp were wounded, and three cowboys were dead. President Barack Obama and House Republicans' showdown over the debt and deficit quickly is turning into Washington's OK Corral. And politicians on…

MSNBC's Chris Matthews and Pat Buchanan got into quite a heated debate on Monday's "Hardball." At issue was the battle of the debt ceiling with Matthews calling Tea Partiers opposed to raising it "crazy protesters" and telling his guest, "You want to join" them (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On his Saturday show Your Money, CNN host Ali Velshi tried to pin the blame for the debt ceiling standoff on one man – the president of Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquist. "Are you the reason that we don't have a debt ceiling increase right now?" he boldly asked his guest. Velshi was referring to Norquist's pledge that entails elected officials who sign it promising to oppose…

According to Chris Matthews, conservative House Republicans who are holding steadfast on resisting a debt ceiling deal that includes tax hikes are like the apocryphal bovine of doom behind the 1871 fire that destroyed much of Chicago (video follows page break):

While the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has voted this year to approve House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan's (R.-Wis.) proposal--that would put the government on a gradual path to a surplus by 2040--and plans to vote on a balanced budget amendment next week that would cap federal spending at 18 percent of GDP, the only budget proposal President Obama's has publicly revealed in 2011…

President Barack Obama says America does not need a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, and he once again blamed much of the fiscal problem on Bush-era tax cuts. “We don’t need a constitutional amendment to do our jobs,” Obama told reporters at his Friday news conference. “The Constitution already tells us to do our jobs -- and to make sure that the government is living within its…

David Frum is bashing conservative Republicans again – this time for playing hardball with President Obama and using the debt ceiling deadline as blackmail to get what they want. Frum writes in a CNN.com op-ed that the GOP demand for "total surrender" by the president on the debt ceiling debate gives him "horrible flashbacks" to the party's staunch opposition to the health care bill – which…

In the midst of staggering illogic surrounding our debt ceiling, ratings agency Moody's just raised the bar. On Monday, it announced that the United States could increase its creditworthiness by - wait for it - eliminating the debt ceiling altogether:

With trillion dollar budget deficits as far as the eye can see, a balanced budget amendment is sounding pretty good to an overwhelming majority of Americans. Apparently CBS's Bob Schieffer isn't amongst them, as he actually asked Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Sunday's "Face the Nation," "Why are you wasting time debating that?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Gloria Borger said this weekend the Tea Party has "hijacked" the GOP and in so doing prevented Barack Obama from becoming a "transformational president." In her view espoused on the syndicated "Chris Matthews Show," without the Tea Party, "The John Boehners of the world [would have] cut a deal with the President of the United States" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

A couple of Sunday interview show hosts again forwarded White House talking points about the necessity to include taxes, I mean “revenues,” in any debt ceiling increase deal with ABC’s Christiane Amanpour focusing on a single poll she highlighted for ammunition the public is on her side while ignoring how, by two-to-one, the public opposes raising the debt ceiling at all. CBS’s Bob Schieffer…