What makes meeting their demands impossible, even apart from the likely hacking away at Medicare and/or Social Security and/or Medicaid, is that their proposals are based on faulty economic premises (Bloomberg: Boehner's Views on Economy Contradicted By Indicators), and would not actually cut the deficit but--in the very headline of Ezra Klein's piece in the Washington Post : "Boehner's debt-limit demands would increase the deficit." Notably: "Extending the Bush tax cuts over the next 10 years, which Boehner favors, will increase the deficit by twice as much as the $2 trillion in spending cuts he's calling for will reduce the deficit."
While President Obama has reportedly instructed negotiators (for the Dems, the chairs of relevant financial committees; for the GOPers, two purely political operatives with no economic experience or expertise) to keep an open mind, just what can be done to satisfy irrational demands built on faulty premises and non-factual assertions? And it's not just a matter of politics, or even a few days of government shutdown to make a point--costly as that would be. It is reneging on past obligations, including huge amounts spent by the Bush administration and authorized by the GOPer controlled Congress. It makes America a deadbeat nation, and since it's never happened, nobody knows how bad it could be or for how long. But there's quite a lot of agreement across the political spectrum of economists--just shy of the unhinged right--that it would be a huge disaster with continuing damage.
Meanwhile, polls show huge majorities against the GOPers main policies: ending Medicare as we know it, and refusing to restore taxes on the extremely rich.
So the world watches this hostage crisis unfold, as an entire country and the global economy as we know it threatened by political terrorists.
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