“I think we are immeasurably worse off. I think it was a complete failure,” Brooks said. “Listen, what did we want out of this? The president wanted a balanced deal with some tax increases and some spending cuts. We didn’t get a balanced deal. There were no real spending cuts.”

“Second, we could have done something to address our long-term debt,” Brooks added. “That was the whole purpose behind this whole thing. We did nothing to address our long-term debt, and almost nothing to reduce deficits over the next 10 years. We could have had a stimulus package to have some short-term economic growth, which was talked about. We did nothing to do that. We did nothing to help reform entitlements.”