MSNBC: Politico's Vandehei says Dems won't agree to spending cuts and R's won't raise revenue

Facts don't matter with Vandehei and others sitting around the table on Morning Joe--except for Eugene Robinson-who was ignored when he pointed out the Dems had made concessions but that the Republicans refused to move. The 'pox on both their houses' meme must be perpetuated--by lazy journalists. Emphasis mine.

all of the time, enough already.

My concern is that it is again an election year. In 2010, when we were in far better shape, the Democrats could not even be pushed into a vote that raised just the taxes on those under $250,000, stating that the fall back position would be doing nothing, so they would all disappear. There concern was that they, not the Republicans would suffer at the polls if they had to cast a vote. At the time, it was said that only about 5 Senators argued strongly to have a pre-election vote - and the only two I saw named were Durbin and Kerry. This shows that most had no perspective longer than the time to the next election.

After the election, when it was clear that 2011 would be tough with a RW dominated Republican party controlling the House, They were willing to halt EVERYTHING in the Senate via procedural stalling techniques - and even the "moderate" Republicans held the line. We only needed one plus the number of defecting Democrats to end each filibuster. In essence, Obama traded the two extension to get unemployment extended (something that used to be routine at that level of unemployment) and a very needed small amount of stimulus. His tough choice - giving the economy a bit more of a chance and helping some of the hardest hit or sacrificing them to eliminate ALL the Bush tax cuts - which on the low end would destimulate the economy.

It is hard to figure out what the choices will be in the 2012 lame duck session - everything is a variable. We could be facing a Republican House, Senate and President - likely enough to even pass the Bush cuts if they expired at the beginning of the year - or we could lose the Senate, but gain the House (due to the fact that in 2006 we won many seats that were purple or even red violet!) We could win all three.

but even if we do win all three, it will be impossible to get a supermajority in the Senate this go around, so the Republicans would likely just keep up with their rampant obstructionism unless they get penalized in some way. President Obama and the Dems should not only campaign for a Democratic Congress again but they need to campaign for a government that functions like it's supposed to and call out the Repubs for their obstructionism since 2009. Hopefully, we'll at least get a lot of the teabaggers out of the House.

if they win the Senate with at least about 2 extra, they should change the filibuster rule. It is really clear that they should have gone for it after the 2010 election - maybe changing the filibuster requirement to say 53 - 55. There are reasons not to make it 51. Part of the problem is that as one law maker said in the past if the other side could get 55 or so votes, there was no filibuster.

The Republicans have abused it beyond all recognition and it's clearly making it impossible to get anything done. That shouldn't even be debatable but it really needs to be hammered home to the public so that everybody clearly understands what the Republicans have been doing and why government has been so dysfunctional since 2009 (actually, this basically started in 2007 but Bush was still POTUS and would've been able to veto everything anyway- though their strategy kept Bush from having to officially veto things that were popular). Right now the Republicans have virtual lock on Congress even though they don't technically control the Senate numerically. The Senate wasn't supposed to require 60 votes to conduct normal business let alone be able to prevent virtually everything from being debated/voted on.

"Bush-tax Cuts WILL be made Magenta"

Republicans in Washington wealthy; they refuse to raise taxes on the rich just to making sure they personally don't have to pay any of their own money.