Scary comment from Lee A. Arnold at DeLong:

Wedges driven in, by clockwork. It looks to me like Speaker Boehner is fed up with the Tea Party, and so he asked the Senate Republicans to come up with something the Senate Democrats would pass, in order to put the intractable House members on the spot. So one wedge is being driven into the Republican Party between the moderates (such as they are) and the wingnuts. The next debate becomes rhetorically very simple: debt ceiling vs. cuts to Social Security and Medicare. And those cuts can be blamed squarely and publicly on the House Republicans. So the second wedge will be driven between the Republican Party and the rest of the country. If the Dems can get back the House in 2014, we could finally start taxing the people who can afford it.

If he means the cuts will be enacted, that's scary. If not, hopefully this wedge action happens and the Republicans lose the House.