I've written on here a few times--and I think this article supports my claim--that all these fights have nothing whatsoever to do with math or economics; Republican calculators don't return a different result than Democratic ones when you press enter. Its fundamentally about gutting the government. They have been chipping away at all New Deal reforms for three decades now, and they finally see an opportunity to deliver it the coup de grace. They are smart enough to know that they have to do it in a way that makes it look like poor leadership by the President is to blame, and not their intransigence, or they won't win another election for thirty years like after the Depression. What they have now that they didn't have then is a giant, international media machine on their side.