It comes down to this: Are the purists in the House of Representatives going to blow up an imperfect fiscal deal because it isn’t pure enough and, thus, risk raising taxes for tens of millions of their constituents?

Seems as if that’s a distinct possibility.

I don’t recall Senate Republicans singing the praises of the deal brokered on New Year’s Eve by Vice President Biden and Republican Leader Mitch McConnell. They don’t like it any more than some liberal Democrats didn’t like some of the tax provisions contained in the bill. But they sought and reached some middle ground, which usually results in effective legislating.

Now it sits in the laps of the House members, most of whom are Republicans – many of whom are ideological Puritans who just cannot fathom the idea of compromise. They want it their way, or else. The “or else” could produce considerable chaos when the financial markets open for business Wednesday, threatening a lot of people’s nest eggs.

I’ll confess that I don’t like much of the budget package cobbled together either. I wish it had contained immediate spending cuts. But buried deep in the bill, near the end of it, there is language that says the cuts will occur in March, after the extended deadline when the automatic cuts are supposed to occur. It remains for Congress to make the cuts rather than allowing the axe to fall.

It’s not a deal-breaker in my view.

It is, however, a non-starter in the eyes of those rigid House purists who now are insisting on having it their way – or no way at all.

The 112th Congress is going out with a bang, illustrating for all to see precisely how it earned the title of Least Productive Congress in history.

Compromise isn’t a four-letter word.

So it came to pass early today when the U.S. Senate approved a deal to avoid plunging the nation into a new recession.

And it was lame-duck Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, who said it well. “You have some wins, some losses; in the end it’s about even.” Hutchison, who voted in favor of the deal, is about to leave the Senate, handing over the seat she held since 1993 to tea party zealot Ted Cruz, who doesn’t see the art of compromise as quite the shining art that Hutchison does.

Too bad for the cause of good government.

The 89-8 Senate vote seeks to keep middle-class taxes low; it stops the automatic cuts mandated by the so-called “fiscal cliff”; it boosts tax rates for families earning more than $450,000 annually; it cuts government spending. All in all, not a bad deal.

Is it perfect? No. I don’t even know how to define perfection at this point. Extremists on both ends of the spectrum sought it, threatening to increase every Americans’ taxes while enacting 10-percent across-the-board cuts in every single government agency. How is that good government?

The House of Representatives has the legislation in its lap. Some zealots – quite likely those on the Republican side – will insist on legislative purity. The buzz at this moment is that the overwhelming majority of House Democrats will sign on to the Senate package.

Those of us out here in Flyover County who believe in good government also believe that you cannot get everything you want every single time. As Sen. Hutchison noted, you win a few and you lose a few.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/blogs/burkablog/?p=14703

Texas Monthly’s Paul Burka seems to feel a bit sorry for Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst.

Not me.

It’s not that I dislike Dewhurst. I’ve always found him to be an earnest fellow. He’s very detail-oriented and has plowed into the workings of the state Senate, over which he presides.

Burka’s sympathy arises from Dewhurst’s loss in the Republican U.S. Senate primary this year to upstart tea party favorite Ted Cruz. Dewhurst, who’s allegedly richer than God, was supposed to be a lock to win that race, and then win the general election against Democrat Paul Sadler. It didn’t happen.

Dewhurst tacked far to the right and out of his comfort zone in order to out-right-wing Cruz. It was a poor fit for a guy who’s about as “establishment” a Republican as they come.

But it’s hard to feel sorry for a guy who still has a pretty important day job as lieutenant governor. Granted, it doesn’t pay much; he earns the same pittance – $600 a month, plus a per diem expense when the Legislature is in session – as other members of the Legislature. But he’s got all those gazillions earned from business investments.

Dewhurst will shake off the bad karma that covered him in 2012. At least he didn’t implode on the presidential campaign trail the way Gov. Rick Perry did. And by the way, Perry then threw all his weight behind Dewhurst’s Senate candidacy. That didn’t work too well for Perry, either.