First of all, I agree with everything you say. The GOP are terrorists holding a gun to the head of the global economy to extract concessions they can't get with regular order. Their efforts to gut the IRS expansion are plainly an effort to protect rich tax cheaters. And yes allowing them to gain any concessions at all from their hostage taking only encourages future extortion efforts.

That said, this debt ceiling/budget deal is pretty much what we could have expected from divided government had it been negotiated in September instead of now. All this drama and humiliation on the world stage for nothing really. At least the budget is done for the year and the debt ceiling has been pushed to January 2025. But the bottom line coming out of this mess is that Biden rolled over these pukes. Dem priorities have been protected and only modest and temporary spending restrictions have been put in place. The IRS expansion has been cut by 25% but that is tolerable in the short run to prevent a global financial catastrophe. After the election next year if all goes well we can run this back.

All that said, the ONLY way this bullshit is acceptable is if Biden follows through with seeking to abolish the debt ceiling nonsense once and for all in the courts. This idiotic accounting gimmick which acts as a self destruct system to the entire global economy must be eliminated from the face of the earth once and for all. Never again must we deal with this madness.