Economics

I'm sure you're asking "Why is the House negotiating the debt with the President?"
Well, I'm asking that question anyways.

The President does indeed have the power to veto any bill the House comes up with. But the Senate can vote down whatever nonsense the House invents too. The President can usually champion budgets, acting as de-facto leader of their party.
The strangest part of the whole thing, to me, is that Republicans are known for talking big when it comes to a balanced budget, but not doing anything about it. Clinton actually balanced the budget, and when G. W. Bush came in and had a majority Republican Congress they completely squandered it. This isn't a matter of any kind of opinion. This is simply factual.
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I have complaints about economists. I hate the way economics has narrowed its focus over the last hundred years so that it can't see the forest for the trees.
I just read "Super Freakanomics". At one point they mention economist Keith Chen and say:

"After a brief infatuation with Marxism, he made an about-face and took up economics."

Hardy-har-har, guys. Now there are two choices here, either Levitt and Dubner were being sarcastic or, worse, they weren't.
Shudder.
So just imagine, these dudes are behavioral economists. And they don't even think that Marx is the father of their science. No, they conveniently skip over Marx and go backwards to Adam Smith. And lets face it, Smith wasn't very smart. Smith tried to describe the economic system as a working system -- when it was very clear it wasn't. You might fault Marx for his predictions about the future, but his description of the economic system in the latter part of the 19th century were pretty good.