This seems pretty significant -- Joe Biden is laying down a marker of $1 trillion in cuts (over a decade, presumably) in order to raise the debt ceiling:
Vice President Biden and congressional leaders left a meeting on the debt limit saying they were on track to find $1 trillion in deficit cuts.
“We are confident that if we keep on this pace we can get to a relatively large number,” Biden told reporters as he exited the meeting in the Capitol that lasted more than two-and-a-half hours. “I think we are in a position where we are going to be able to get to where we can get to $1 trillion which will be a down-payment on the process.”
The top Republican in the Biden-led talks, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), also struck a positive tone and said he thought lawmakers could find “over a trillion dollars in spending cuts.”
“I actually found the ability to work together to actually agree on spending cuts,” Cantor told The Hill after the meeting. “I think some are finding that it’s not so hard.”
“I am optimistic that we are making progress in terms of finding areas of agreement of well over a trillion dollars in cuts,” he added.
They should be able to find a trillion, because Obama's budget cuts a trillion dollars. But how does the administration get Republicans to agree to higher revenue? And how big of a debt ceiling hike do they get? The administration can't keep creating more and more opportunities for Republicans to hold the financial system hostage. They need this negotiation to be the last one until at least 2013. Doing this again during an election year would be impossible.