Well said, Frank Morton.

As others have said before me, cuts need to be made, but they need to be made in such a fashion that it doesn't hurt our recovering economy. Throwing the middle-class straight into the poverty lines is not going to be helpful to our economic recovery, unless you think that is going to make the middle-class prosperous. Then I'd have to tell you that you need to take some economics courses. There is simply no way you are going to cut the deficit to nothing in one year. To do that would kill any chances at economic recovery, but I am sure there are many of you that want just that, so the top 2% can own 98% of the wealth in this country and the rest can work for the pennies that they want to pay the workers. If you need a lesson in this, look to Mexico. They have an almost non-existent middle-class, which is what is rapidly happening to this country. Many of you keep saying Scott Walker will prevail in the unions fight in Wisconsin. If you believe that, then you haven't been paying attention. He is steadily losing support for his bill. The Dems have already peeled 2 moderate Republicans in the senate away from their peers, and only need to peel 2 more away to be able to force a deal with the Gov. The protests have not been getting smaller, but bigger. This should be a sign that they aren't going to give up, and the local law enforcement are backing the protesters, not the Gov. We'll see how this ends up and if you think Walker keeps his job past next January, you may be fooling yourself. I bet he gets recalled. If you think he is doing such a bang up job, maybe you should see what he did as Milwaukee County Chief Executive. Look it up, and see how he talks about saving money, but ends up costing the people more than actually saving any money. In fact, the county is still paying for his screw ups (according to the mayor of Milwaukee). Just a bit of food for thought.

In a related story, Harry Reid is still a peccerhed.

I think this is grea news.

If they (Boehner and Reid) can come together and compromise of a small (but very important) bill like this in a relatively short period of time, then it gives me confidence that they can lead their respective hordes of hard heads back to the compromise table to work out even bigger and longer range issues.

Neither are the most well liked figures (from the perspective of the press and the other side), bt they seem to be holding control of their respective caucus and conference and with some influence from the President, just may be ready to tackle some of the big issues that we must tackle now.

Tax code reform, corporate tax reform, ending corporate subsidies, campaign funding reform, controlled reduction of the DoD over time, a plan to reform and stabilize the entitlement programs, a long term plan to eliminate the deficit and pay down the debt and who knows maybe even a coming together on some tweaks to the HCR to make it acceptable to all.

I applaud the eforts of Speaker Boehner and Leader Reid

Why isn’t anyone talking about the 10 years of war and building new infrastructure in scores of different countries has cost us Billions and Billions of dollars and for what? The practice of buying friends really needs to be examined (stopped) but no one is even looking at or talking about that. All they want to do is take more from Americans and lower our standard of living. What about creating jobs and rebuilding our countries infrastructure. It is time he start staying out of every others countries business and focus on ours. When is our government leaders ever going to start looking that these things and make them right? Another thing they talk a lot about entitlements but fail to say people paid for them their whole working life it is the Government leadership that did not put that money in a place for it to gain interest so that the money would be there, instead they spent it on pork barrel projects and in other countries so why blame the ones who did the right thing. You can't give them their life back so you damn sure should give them what’s owed. A deal is a deal, if you can't believe your countries leadership then who can you believe? God Bless America.

The hypocrisy of the Right, The GOP the Tea Party; whatever you want to call them. They fought to add billions of dollars to the debt to secure tax breaks for the wealthy and now they want to cut services for those most in need during this economic downturn. For all the Fat, Unhealthy, Smoking, Diabetic, Breeding, Unemployed or Underemployed Republicans who call for cutting Social Services and repealing the Health Care Reform Act, what goes around comes around and you will be needing those services you are so hellbent on ending!