Frank James

President Obama, now scheduled to give a major speech Wednesday afternoon at George Washington University on deficit reduction, has been criticized for arriving so late to this particular fiscal-responsibility party.

As has been widely noted, the president didn't fully embrace the results of his Simpson-Bowles fiscal reform commission which in December recommended a series of spending cuts, including reforms of both entitlements and taxes, to reduce the nation's deficits.

Reports of the death of compromise in Washington are greatly exaggerated.

That's one important message from the 11th-hour agreement that averted a partial shutdown of the federal government Friday night.

"No compromise" has been the rallying cry of the Tea Party movement. Some Republican lawmakers have echoed that.

But the agreement reached Friday was the epitome of compromise. Republicans had come into the negotiations demanding $61 billion in spending cuts from the remainder of fiscal year 2011 which ends in September.