The American two-party system
By 
If you want to know the relative priorities of the Democratic and Republican parties on economic policy, it’s hard to do better than this:
The House gave broad bipartisan approval on Wednesday to a $78 billion bill that would expand the child tax credit and restore a set of corporate tax breaks, a rare feat in an election year by a Congress that has labored to legislate.
The obsession with a Grand Bargain assumes that Republicans want spending to be paid for, when the reality is Democrats might get spending for something useful if they agree to what Republicans actually care about [upper-class tax cuts.]