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" Over at Josh&amp;#039;s joint, we discover that the budget negotiations involving Senator Patty Murray and Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver from Wisconsin, are going pretty much the way we expected them to go. Which to say, not well at all. The tricky part is how to satisfy each party&amp;#039;s red line by the Dec. 13 deadline for the budget conference. The contours of the potential deal are as TPM reported in late October. There is broad agreement that a portion of the sequester should be replaced with targeted cuts to discretionary spending. But Democrats demand revenues in the mix and Republicans categorically reject new taxes. So to thread that needle, sources familiar with the negotiations say, Murray and Ryan are weighing revenues in the form of asset sales and government fees, rather than Democrats&amp;#039; preference for raising revenue by scaling back tax loopholes. I believe I have missed a memo. Since the Republicans absolutely refuse to raise taxes on anyone anywhere ever, wasn&amp;#039;t the original &amp;quot;compromise position&amp;quot; that the two sides would increase revenues by closing loopholes and otherwise &amp;quot;reforming&amp;quot; the tax code? Now, even scaling back tax loopholes is off the table in favor of, I dunno, socking it to snowmobilers and selling off Yellowstone National Park to Canadian mining interests. Tell me, please, how the whole economic discussion is not being contested solely within the context of conservative economics that already have been shown to have failed to country since 1981. The very involvement of Paul Ryan in any serious economic discussion is prima facie evidence of a sucker&amp;#039;s game. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a19941/murray-ryan-budget-deal-negotiations-120313/>