I'm totally sympathetic to your arguments that the political process is broken, but you lose me with your insistence that both sides are responsible for it. Do you realize how far to the right the Democrats begin in these negotiations, and how far further to the right the Tea Party has been dragging them?

As but one example, John Boehner's opening bid in FY2011 budget negotiations was around $33 billion in cuts to a list of programs that Republicans didn't like, including the preposterous riders that would defund NPR, EPA, Planned Parenthood, etc. that offer no measurable cost savings, but make wingnut voters happy. The White House countered with an offer that, instead of meeting the opening bid halfway, gave the GOP the full amount of cuts they wanted, but refused the absurd riders about NPR and Planned Parenthood.

Boehner then went back to his caucus, and not only did they not accept the White House's offer, despite it giving them the full amount of cuts they wanted, but they insisted the riders remain in, and then *increased* the amount of cuts they required to $61 billion.

Imagine you're bidding on a house that's listed at $300,000. You place an opening bid of $250k, and require the seller to leave all of their possessions behind, including the appliances, the family dog, and their first-born son. Instead of laughing in your face and walking away, they come back and say they'll give you the house and the appliances for $250k, but they want to keep the dog, and little Johnny is off the table completely. You respond by saying no deal unless Johnny and the dog are included, and, by the way, you want it for $200k now.

Somehow, the Democrats are still negotiating under these very circumstances.

If you pay any attention to congress these days, this "Bad Cop, Insane Cop" approach has served the GOP well, with Democrats generally kowtowing to whatever the most extreme elements of the GOP ask for. To my surprise, Democrats have shown at least a bit of a backbone by not caving to these demands, but the GOP will likely get more in cuts than they initially opened negotiations with.

How can you claim this is a "both sides" problem?