I just had the historic experience of getting dinged at the New York Times website for having gone over my 20 article limit for the month and needing to pay up. At first I thought, This is what I get after giving them a pass on the Dowd thing? Anyway, even though I didn’t have anything else I wanted to read at that moment I clicked through to another article to see what would happen.
Sure enough, there it was for about 2 seconds until a sign popped up telling me to subscribe. It gave me a quick explanation and then there’s this big button with the text “See My Options >”
I have to say it made me laugh. Because, like, isn’t that the conversation you have with your doctor? My options? Is it that bad?
Late Update: I should add on a more serious note that, unlike a lot of others, I don’t see anything wrong or wrongheaded about what the Times is doing. And of all the ways to implement a paywall this strikes me as one of the better thought out approaches I’ve seen. The old one — taking your opinion columnists out of circulation — bordered on insane. The paid vs ad supported question is a strategic one. Different approaches make sense for different kinds of publications. But there’s hardly anything wrong with placing a value on your product.
I’d spent part of the weekend writing a post on why the White House has to decide now that it won’t get into any more policy debates with hostage takers — a point Matt Yglesias explains here. I hope to return to it. But first a different point: The White House is signaling that it will come off Friday’s budget deal with a new and more aggressive plan to cut the deficit and ‘reform’ Medicare and Medicaid. Top White House advisor David Plouffe notes that the president’s plan will use a “scalpel and not a machete.”
Frankly, that strikes me as the sort of over-clever language political handlers come up with when they’re in the midst of dealing themselves a losing political hand. Read More
It was a bruising first budget battle with the new Republican-controlled House, with two bigger battles looming.
Republican members of Congress already expressing disenchantment with the budget deal.
The GOP conference meeting is breaking up. Some of the most conservative Republicans, like Reps. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Steve King (R-IA), have hurried away without talking to reporters, TPM’s Brian Beutler reports from the Hill. But various reports suggest Speaker Boehner used the meeting to sell his members on a stopgap measure that avoids a shutdown and a long-term deal that will be voted on next week.
A senior Democratic aide tells TPM that the stopgap includes $2 billion in cuts (other reports have pegged it at $3 billion) and the long-term deal includes $38-$39 billion in cuts. That puts the spending cuts very near what Boehner had been seeking all along.
Part of the deal includes a floor vote in the Senate to defund Planned Parenthood, Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) tells reporters. That’s presumably a symbolic vote that will fail but is in return for Republicans giving up a similar provision in the budget resolution.
Late Update: The first “official” word of a deal comes in a tweet from Harry Reid’s spokesman Jon Summers: “We have an agreement. Details/statement coming soon.”
Details of the pending budget deal are slowly leaking out, in rather unusual ways. A short time ago, TPM’s Benjy Sarlin overheard Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) telling a small tour group in the Capitol that there’s an agreement in place for a three-day extension to avert a shutdown while details of the final deal are finalized.
Shortly after that, a press release appeared prematurely on the website of Sen. Mike Johanns (R-NE) expressing his pleasure that a “three-day budget agreement” had been reached. The press release has since been pulled down. Here’s a screengrab:
All of this suggests that Republicans in Congress have been alerted to the contours of the deal, but that the leadership in both chambers is still in the process of selling the deal to their members. They can’t get a deal passed in time to beat the deadline, but this intermediate step will avoid a shutdown and give them time to complete the deal. Whether it’s a three-day bridge or a seven-day bridge doesn’t make much difference. The point is an agreement looks on the verge of being in place.
The leadership meeting in Speaker Boehner’s office just broke up, and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) told reporters that the entire House GOP conference will meet at 9:45 p.m. ET, presumably to discuss the pending budget deal, TPM’s Brian Beutler reports from the Hill.
We’re told it’s a members only meeting. No staff.
Harry Reid was reportedly set to make a floor speech in the Senate at 10:30 p.m. ET (a speech that reports have kept pushing back over the course of the evening), but his spokesperson tweets:
Despite tweets, Reid not scheduled to go to floor. We are still negotiating. Will advise if he will make a speech.
A Democratic source tells TPM that both sides are close to putting together a budget deal with $39 billion in spending cuts and agreements to remove the controversial policy riders Republicans were fighting for. That’s a billion more in cuts than Democrats were saying all day today was their maximum number. So some additional concessions apparently made there by the Democrats.
This isn’t a done deal yet, our source says. But the negotiators for both sides are sold on it, and hoping to make it work.
Speaker Boehner’s office is locked down in a leadership meeting, presumably as Boehner pitches the deal to his top lieutenants.
More soon …
Some late developments suggest a deal may be at hand — though still not final.