At a White House meeting on July 7 when President Obama told congressional leaders he wanted a grand bargain on deficit reduction, Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat and a member of the bipartisan so-called Gang of Six, began to suggest that the gathered leaders look at the Gang’s work as a starting point for a deal. That’s when Obama cut him off. Top White House and congressional leaders were not included in that group, Obama told Durbin, and they are the primary negotiators now. The President is probably regretting those words.

White House talks have all but collapsed. And on Tuesday, the Gang of Six – rejoined by Senator Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican who’d left the group in mid-May – announced a plan that’s emerging as the best chance for a large deficit reduction package before the Aug. 2 deadline to raise the debt ceiling. “You have six of the most respected members, including three of the most conservative Republican Senators, who worked for six months and have come up with a recommendation that will reduce our debt by nearly $4 trillion,” Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the Senate No. 3 Republican, told reporters on Capitol Hill, “This is a very important step and therefore I support it.”