Other views: 'Fiscal cliff' deal doesn't bode well

Paul Krugman, The New York Times: "You could say that Democrats held their ground on the essentials — no cuts in benefits — while Republicans have just voted for a tax increase for the first time in decades. So why the bad taste in progressives' mouths? It has less to do with where President Obama ended up than with how he got there. He kept drawing lines in the sand, then erasing them and retreating to a new position. And his evident desire to have a deal before hitting the essentially innocuous 'fiscal cliff' bodes very badly for the confrontation looming in a few weeks over the debt ceiling."

John Cassidy, The New Yorker: "So much for the Washington pundits, the amateur game theorists (myself included), and the administration officials who were all convinced a few weeks ago that the Republicans, lacking any bargaining power, would be forced to settle on the White House's terms. ... One thing the leverage story didn't fully account for was the willingness — make that eagerness — on the part of many conservative GOPers to send the economy over the cliff and be damned. "

Sam Pizzigati, Los Angeles Times: "Is history simply repeating? If so, bring that repeat on, with the same final result. That 1932 fiscal crisis produced an unexpected, and stunning, watershed in U.S. history, the moment when America's rich and powerful began to lose their lock-grip on the nation's political pulse. ... The rich reached for the brass ring, a national sales tax, and the people slapped them down. In New York, an ambitious governor took notice. Just two weeks after the tax battle, Franklin D. Roosevelt, a candidate for the 1932 Democratic presidential nomination, would begin a series of addresses that aligned his candidacy with the grass-roots push against plutocracy. 'Do what we may have to do to inject life into our ailing economic order,' FDR would explain, 'we cannot make it endure for long unless we can bring about a wiser, more equitable distribution of the national income.' The New Deal had begun. What will we begin?"

Matthew Rose, The Wall Street Journal: "As Tuesday dawned, another problem dawned: This particular cliff is just the first of many cliffs we'll encounter in 2013. In a couple of months time, the delay in the spending cuts — part of the New Year's deal — will run out. About the same time, the Treasury's emergency maneuvers to prevent the U.S. breaching its borrowing limit will run out, tempting a debt crisis like that in the summer of 2011. And the government's funding expires in March."