Helgoland: And I agree. The Democrats shouldn't have to compromise on anything. As the White House says, the House shouldn't be rewarded for doing their job. I'm just saying that I'd be fine with a delay on the individual mandate purely as a means of ending all this. It's not politically or policywise optimal for the ACA, but if that's all it takes to reopen the government and not default, I'd be OK.
Of course, if the GOP demands more than just a delay of the individual mandate (and perhaps the medical device tax?), no dice.
(As an aside, I must admit I'm slightly suspicious of forcing people to pay a fine for not getting health insurance. If the ACA is so awesome, why wouldn't people just clamor for the insurance, like the server issues on the exchanges would suggest is currently happening?)
Although I'm certainly with the Democrats here, I certainly think they could give up the individual mandate for a while. And if that's all the Republicans ask for, I'd say that's a pretty sweet deal. A functioning government and economy for one delayed tax.
Problem: The gains of "The same economy and government we had before, except now slightly shittier" doesn't speak for much, especially since they could do it again. Recall a clean CR would fund the government through Nov 15. That's now 5 days more then a month. And they have used these, before, to extract budget cuts. They will do it again, despite being the minority party in half of Congress.
I say that in this particular crisis, so far, Obama has done nothing, not one thing, I myself would not have done.
The gains aren't great, but they're infinitely better than the failure option. I'm not at all confident that we'll fix the government in those more critical ways until Democrats take control of the House in 2014 (yes, I'm hopeful this will occur). Look at how much effort it takes
to keep a functioning government and world economy! I can't imagine anything being
improved until we at least boot the Tea Party out of office, or alternatively take control of the House.