Obama was never serious about big cuts in a debt deal

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who figured out earlier than most that the President wasn’t serious, long ago turned to crafting a deal within Congress. He’s now been joined by John Boehner, who was prepared to take political risks to reach for the “big deal” only to tire of White House antics. Now House Republicans and Senate Democrats are each working to craft their own plans, and it says something that the country has a better shot of getting something out of a divided Congress than it does out of the Oval Office.

Then again, it has long been clear that Mr. Obama isn’t interested in spending reform. In February he proposed a budget that spent more than any in U.S. history. In April he demanded that Congress pass a “clean” debt ceiling hike that included no spending cuts whatsoever. Only after House Republicans unveiled their own sweeping budgetary reforms did the White House rush to also claim it wanted deficit reduction as part of the debt-ceiling debate.

In June, the President dispatched Joe Biden to negotiate spending cuts, only to have the White House insist at the last minute that modest trims be accompanied by significant new taxes. Mr. Boehner and the Senate’s bipartisan Gang of Six produced plans that would have acceded to that White House demand in exchange for substantive tax reform that would have lowered individual and corporate rates. Yet last week the White House backtracked on its agreement for the lower tax rates and demanded another $400 billion in tax revenues above the $800 billion the Speaker had already conceded.