Open thread for night owls: Why not a 'grand bargain' that makes life better for the working class?

digby writes about the "grand bargain:

Alex Pareene at Salon has written a great piece about the revival of the Grand Bargain in his inimitable style that's well-worth reading. I just want to pull out on little piece that I don't think many people really understand: Here's a fun secret: Tax reform (in this case referring to eliminating or scaling back 'tax expenditures') is technically a conservative policy priority, even if elected Republicans refuse to ever support it for real. This is a compromise in which conservative policy is being offered in exchange for conservative support for a conservative policy. The sequester and Obama's Bargain quest mean that Republicans can choose between allowing a Democrat to 'take credit' for cutting the two most popular programs in the country or they can just live with the already-passed government spending cut that they are also able to blame on the president. Also keep in mind that tax reform has been one of the pillars of the Grand Bargain since President Obama first proposed it in 2009. It's pretty much guaranteed to be, at best, some sort of symbolic loophole closing while at the same time "broadening the base and lowering the rates." It's a "reform" only a tax lawyer could love.

Pareene also notes:

There are two important things to remember about 'entitlements': They are hugely popular programs for a very good reason, and actual sensible 'reform' would mean improving them, not sacrificing them at the altar of 'fiscal responsibility.' A 'grand bargain' that was done with the intention of creating the best possible outcome for the most Americans, instead of with the intention of purposefully doing unpopular things because doing unpopular things denotes 'seriousness,' would lower the Medicare eligibility age and expand Social Security. That the opposite approach is effectively the bipartisan consensus approach is the special sort of Beltway madness that makes sensible people wish for either a proper parliamentary system or at the very least for an EMP to take out Georgetown and much of Washington's surrounding suburbs.

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