Our guest blogger is Sarah Ayres, a research associate at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

By now we have all heard the latest in the months-long debate over reducing the nation’s deficit — barring a last-minute miracle, the congressional super committee tasked with finding at least $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction will fail to come to an agreement. Cue handwringing by pundits lamenting the inability of both Democrats and Republicans to compromise.

The notion that both sides share in the blame is an easy line for commentators to repeat, but it isn’t true. Time and time again, the only thing preventing an agreement on long-term deficit reduction has been the Republicans’ absolute refusal to consider any tax increases on high-income households as part of the solution. Michael Linden and I created a timeline of major events in the past six months of deficit talks:

February 14, 2011: President Barack Obama submits budget for 2012 with about $2 trillion in deficit reduction, half of which come from spending cuts.

April 15, 2011: House passes Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget, which includes $5.8 trillion in spending cuts along with tax cuts for the richest Americans.

May 5, 2011: Vice President Joe Biden begins debt talks.

May 11, 2011: Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) says he will not raise debt limit without spending cuts that match how much the limit is raised.

June 23, 2011: Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) walks away from debt ceiling talks with Biden after refusing to consider any tax increases. The administration had offered $2.4 trillion in spending cuts for $400 billion in taxes, an 83:17 split.

July 7, 2011: Obama and Boehner begin debt-ceiling negotiations.

July 9, 2011: Boehner walks away from Obama’s “grand bargain”: $4 trillion in debt reduction comprised of $1 trillion in revenue and $3 trillion in spending cuts, including entitlement reforms.

July 19, 2011: The Gang of Six proposes a $4 trillion deficit reduction plan, including $2 trillion in revenue.

July 22, 2011: Again, Boehner walks away from negotiations after Obama offers $1.2 trillion in revenues and $1.6 trillion in spending cuts, including entitlements.

July 31, 2011: Debt ceiling agreement is reached, cutting $1 trillion in spending immediately and establishing the super committee to reduce deficits by at least an additional $1.2 trillion.

October 26, 2011: Democrats first super committee offer is $3 trillion in deficit reduction comprised of about $1.3 trillion in revenues and $1.7 trillion in spending cuts, including cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. Republicans immediately reject it. Republicans’ first super committee offer is $2.2 trillion in deficit reduction, which includes no new tax revenues.

November 8, 2011: Republicans’ second super committee offer is $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction. It does include $300 billion in new tax revenue, but in exchange for extending the Bush tax cuts and lowering the top tax rate. The plan would ultimately cut taxes for the wealthy and raise them for everyone else.

November 10, 2011: Democrats’ second offer is $2.3 trillion in deficit reduction, consisting of $1.3 trillion in spending cuts and $1 trillion in revenue. The revenue would be split between $350 billion in concrete measures and $650 billion in future tax reform. Republicans reject it.

November 11, 2011: Democrats agree to Republicans’ top lines including just $400 billion in revenues and $875 billion in spending cuts, but refuse to accept the GOP’s tax cut for the rich. Republicans reject it and make their final offer: $640 billion in spending cuts and $3 billion in revenues.

What this timeline shows is just how much Democrats have been willing to bend, only to have Republicans reject very generous offers. Back in June, Democrats reportedly offered a mere $400 billion in tax increases as part of a $2.4 trillion deficit reduction package — a 83:17 ratio of spending cuts to tax increases. Republicans said no.

And they haven’t budged an inch since then, stubbornly insisting that any deficit reduction package consist entirely of spending cuts. Even after Democrats on the super committee agreed to the Republican top line of $400 billion in revenues, Republicans refused to make a deal.

Looking at all the offers rejected by Republicans, it comes as no surprise that the super committee will not reach a deal. By rejecting any mix of spending cuts and tax increases, Republicans ensured that there would be no agreement a deficit reduction package.

Unless unemployment benefits are extended in the next few months, six million Americans will lose their benefits in 2012, including one million in January alone. This will suck $57 billion out of the economy in the first quarter of next year.

Republicans have turned several extensions of unemployment benefits into political theater, refusing to extend them without offsetting cuts elsewhere in the budget. On CNN’s State of the Union yesterday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) started this song-and-dance again, telling Candy Crowley that he would not support any plan that extended unemployment benefits without a way to pay for it, because to do otherwise is “to borrow money from China to pay people not to work”:

“If you want to extend unemployment benefits, they have to be paid for,” Paul said. “We have an unemployment program. We have a tax for it. It’s paid for for 26 weeks. So the question is, do we want to borrow money from China to pay people not to work?”

Watch Paul’s comments:

But Paul’s assessment of unemployment benefits vastly underestimates their value. Research has proven that benefits for the long-term unemployed are not weakening job search efforts. And the extended benefits provide necessary support to those who are unemployed and help boost the economy. In fact, unemployment benefits provide some of the highest bang-for-the-buck of any government program.

Already, most jobless Americans are no longer eligible for unemployment benefits. At a time when there are still four job seekers for every opening and many Americans continue to struggle with unemployment, it belittles their struggle for Paul to say that the vital support from unemployment benefits is only paying them “not to work.”

Both Reagan & Clinton signed "grand bargains" with tax increases

The congressional super committee tasked with cutting $1.5 trillion from the federal deficit over the next 10 years is likely to announce its failure today, and the main reason is that the committee’s six Republicans refused to budge on their support for massive tax cuts for the rich. Democrats would have even accepted the GOP’s paltry concession on revenues — $350 billion from ending deductions — had Republicans not included a permanent extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) said this morning.

Twenty-four cents out of every dollar saved in Sen. Pat Toomey’s (R-PA) plan that became the primary Republican offer came from tax increases, an even smaller number than proposed in bipartisan plans from other commissions. But while taxes have become the major sticking point between the two parties in their attempts to reach multiple bargains this year, that hasn’t always been the case. Tax increases, in fact, made up large parts of the five “fiscal grand bargains” made during the Reagan, H.W. Bush, and Clinton administrations, the New York Times reports:

In the five fiscal grand bargains of the 1980s and early 1990s, tax increases accounted for an average of 61 cents of every dollar saved. In fact, in President Reagan’s 1982 and 1984 budget-trimming deals, more than 80 percent of deficit reductions came from tax increases. What’s more, the deals passed with majority support from both parties. Mr. Reagan may be remembered as an antitax hero, but he actually raised taxes 11 times over the course of his presidency, all in the name of fiscal responsibility.

Republicans used to rank deficit reduction ahead of curbing taxes, but now the reverse is true.

While Republicans claim to be focused on deficit reduction, their attachment to tax cuts continues to tell a different story. The Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, originally passed in 2003, blew a hole in the federal budget when the GOP offered no plan to pay for them, even though the party predicted at the time that it would pay off the nation’s debt in 10 years. And instead of asking the wealthiest Americans to sacrifice, the GOP has sought to take the knife to an array of programs that help the elderly, the poor, and women, infants, and children in the name of deficit reduction.

The super committee’s lack of a deal isn’t necessarily a “failure,” as economists have warned that forced austerity would only imperil the American economy. But the GOP’s intransigence, tied together by anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, has already led to the first credit downgrade in American history. Now, even as Republicans attempt to lay blame at the feet of Democrats, that anti-tax dogma has prevented the super committee from reaching a deal that Democrats were apparently itching to sign onto.

Super committee Republicans proposed a deal last week that includes only $300 billion in revenue increases, all in the form of deduction eliminations, a paltry concession that was vastly outweighed by the massive tax cut for the rich the plan also included. While the proposal was an attempt to make Republicans look like they were actually considering revenue increases as part of a deal, it was quickly dismissed by Democrats. Even anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist saw through the plan, dismissing it as nothing more than a “negotiating position.”

Super committee co-chair Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) made that clear yesterday, suggesting to CNBC’s Larry Kudlow that “any penny” in revenue increases would be a deal-breaker for the committee’s Republican members. “But listen, any penny of increased static revenue is a step in the wrong direction,” Hensarling said.

Now, however, with Democrats rebuking Hensarling’s comments as “unhelpful,” and even some Republicans agreeing that the party may need to concede on taxes, Hensarling has walked back those comments, suggesting the GOP would consider new revenues in exchange for deeper concessions — in the form of entitlement cuts — from Democrats, the Hill reports:

Republicans on Wednesday signaled they would consider higher tax revenues to win a supercommittee deal if Democrats offer deeper cuts to entitlement spending. [...]

Briefing reporters on Wednesday, Hensarling said Republicans would be “more than happy to negotiate” around a new offer from Democrats, pointedly declining to say whether $250 billion was the maximum in new revenue the GOP could accept.

“I’m waiting for the Democrats to put fundamental reform on the table,” Hensarling said.

According to the Washington Post, the GOP is beginning to undergo an “identity crisis” when it comes to taxes, as members have realized that reaching a super committee deal and balancing the country’s budget is impossible without raising new revenue.

But while Hensarling’s new position may seem reasonable on its face, it’s unfortunate that he and his party continue to hold vital entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security hostage while supporting massive tax cuts for the rich, even as a growing number of millionaires are begging the GOP to raise their taxes to help address the nation’s debt. Those actions are particularly troubling in the face of recent reports from economists who warned that such austerity measures will only push the country closer to the brink of another recession.