Editorial Board
From Dueling Plans, the Path to a Debt-Ceiling Compromise: View
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The debt-ceiling fight looks hopelessly gridlocked after Monday’s competing televised appeals by President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner. But despite the partisan attacks, compromise is still possible.
It won’t be a transformative grand bargain. It won’t overhaul the encrusted tax system, or the big entitlement programs of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. It will involve mostly domestic spending cuts, and it won’t raise much-needed new revenue. And it will require yet another panel of lawmakers to find new spending cuts down the road. But it will at least avoid a U.S. government default on its obligations.