A bad weekend for the White House: The Tea Party wins, Democrats lose, and the carnage will be even worse next year

By Andrew Leonard

In the end, President Obama had to admit surrender. He tried to put a bold face on it, but there's no other way to interpret his remarks to the nation announcing that Congressional leaders had cut a deal to raise the debt ceiling.

The details of the deal are stark: at least $2.5 trillion in spending cuts over the next two years, a two-stage approach to raising the debt ceiling, and a new committee to recommend further cuts to entitlement programs, along with huge automatic spending cuts if Congress fails to institute that plan. As described, the deal is a major victory for Republicans that will further embolden them over the next 18 months, and may mortally wound Obama's chances of reelection.

The president told the nation that after ten years the United States would have "the lowest level of annual domestic spending since Dwight Eisenhower was President." He said this as if it was something to be proud of. The truth is, we are a far different nation today than we were in the 1950s. We have millions more citizens, and are undergoing a major demographic shift as the Baby Boomer generation ages. With health care costs continuing to rise, the squeeze will be on. People will suffer.

The president stated that "I've said from the beginning that the ultimate solution to our deficit problem must be balanced." And yes, Obama has long maintained that revenue increases that would partially balance out any cuts to entitlement programs must be part of any deal. But there are no revenue increases in this deal. And it is surely a pipe dream to imagine that Democrats will be able to include any new revenue increases in further negotiations. After what we've seen so far, first in the government shutdown drama and now in the debt ceiling fight -- when Republicans hold firm, Democrats give in. The pattern has been set.

What happens when a political party taints a critical national debate with a falsehood? Not much.

— By David Corn

What does the news media do when a critical national debate is tainted by a lie? Not a whole lot.

During the debt ceiling showdown, the Republicans have clearly calculated that an effective charge to hurl at President Barack Obama and the Democrats is that the president, by asking Congress to raise the debt ceiling (which used to be a routine maneuver for Capitol Hill), is requesting a "blank check" for government spending.

In his response to Obama's speech on Monday evening, House Speaker John Boehner claimed that Obama "wants a blank check" for a spending binge that is "sapping the drive of our people." Earlier in the day, Boehner slammed Sen. Harry Reid's last-ditch debt plan, which the White House supports, as a "blank check." On Monday morning, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor issued a statement: "We have worked for months to back the President and Congressional Democrats away from their demand for a blank check to keep spending." On Tuesday morning, the Republican National Committee sent out a fundraising email with the subject head, "Stop Obama's Blank Check." If you'd like to join the Republicans in "taking away Obama's blank check," you could send "$25, $50, $100, or more" to the RNC. On Tuesday afternoon, the National Republican Congressional Committee tweeted, "The President of No: Obama Continues to Insist on a Blank Check for More Spending." And Boehner, in desperate search of conservative support for his debt-ceiling/deficit-reduction plan, called Rush Limbaugh and vowed he wouldn't give Obama a blank check.