House GOP Still Acting As If It Can't Be Beaten

I first posted a month ago about how House Republicans are increasingly acting as if there's no way they won't be in the majority at least through the end of this decade. Back in January I said that this was one of the primary reasons why the threat of a sequester and government shutdown had to be taken more seriously than most analysts were doing.

Now there's more evidence that the House GOP thinks its majority will continue to exist for quite a while.

At least that's how I read this story from The Hill by Russell Berman that explains how the House is letting the Senate go first so that Democrats can't avoid tough votes on a variety of issues as they have done over the previous two years when it refused to take up House-passed legislation.

This is yet another indication that the big budget deal, the so-called Grand Bargain that combines tax reform with major entitlement changes, is all but dead through the 2014 election.