Source:
NY TimesBy JACKIE CALMES
Published: April 16, 2011
WASHINGTON — Days after President Obama called for forming a bipartisan group in Congress to begin negotiating a $4 trillion debt-reduction package, the parties have not even agreed to its membership. Yet six senators — three Democrats, three Republicans — say they are nearing consensus on just such a plan.
Whether the so-called Gang of Six can actually deliver something when Congress returns from a recess in May could determine whether Democrats and Republicans can come together to resolve the nation’s fiscal problems before the 2012 elections.
As Mr. Obama and Republican leaders have warred publicly over the budget, this small group of senators has spent four months in dozens of secretive meetings in offices at the Capitol and over dinner at the suburban Virginia home of Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat. The senators have weathered criticism from bloggers and even colleagues, including the leaders of their own parties, who oppose tampering with Social Security or taxes. The gang nearly collapsed several times, including two weeks ago.
The group’s oldest members — Senator Richard J. Durbin, 66, a progressive from Illinois who counts the Senate’s only socialist as a friend and ally, and Senator Saxby Chambliss, 67, a genial Georgia conservative whose nasty first campaign left lingering bad feelings among Democrats, and who is a confidant of Speaker John A. Boehner — illustrate that even with the mounting federal debt intensifying the partisan divide over spending and taxes, the severity of the fiscal threat is forging unlikely alliances.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/us/politics/17fiscal.html?_r=1&hp
With Durbin in on it, BO is engineering the big SELL-OUT. The last senate gang compromised into accepting Roberts and Alito and who among us believes this will turn out any better. BO has done his posturing for the left this week and now he collapses like a cheap suit but unemployment benefits will continue so the fucking republic is safe. Political theater turns into a tragedy for the working American's future. We can now hear that distant rumble of the WH BULLSHIT machine winding up to a full-tilt boogie load dump into the fan. Gold bricks and the Brooklyn Bridge are on the table and corporate America is so happy they could shit themselves. I am so proud to be a Roosevelt Democrat not associated in any manner with the current DINO party.