Flash forward about five months: Obama was secretly negotiating with the Republican House Speaker John Boehner over a so-called grand-bargain budget deal. This deal would have resolved a budget standoff that was threatening a very fragile economy and would have provided economic aid to struggling families in the near term in exchange for reducing the deficit in the long term.336 After several fits and starts, Boehner called Obama to tell him the deal was dead. And who was the person holding the bloody knife? Paul Ryan. What was Ryan’s reason? A disagreement on policy? No. He thought it was a
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