Interesting argument from Ezra Klein:

A little bit of stimulus could buy you a lot of deficit reduction. Imagine if Republicans offered Democrats a 4:1:1 deal: For every $4 of specific spending cuts over the next 12 years, they’d back $1 of tax increases and $1 of stimulus. A deficit-reduction deal that cut $3 trillion would carry $1 trillion in tax increases — so, $4 trillion in total deficit reduction — and $1 trillion in stimulus. Who’s the liberal who’d say no? And yet, that’s a big deficit reduction package. Among the biggest in our history, actually.

Here’s the problem. The Democrats already caved and ceded the notion of massive spending cuts to the GOP, so that’s already part of the deal. Now the GOP is demanding no tax increases. If Dems demand “stimulus” it will be a “new” demand and the GOP will want something else as well, in addition to “no tax increases.” All because Democrats haven’t really asked for anything at this point, and have already ceded the most important point of the entire negotiation, the $4 trillion in cuts. When the GOP began to unrealistically demand no tax increases, Democrats should have responded “ONLY tax increases.” But they didn’t.