Budget Plan’s Defeat Shows Hurdles to Compromise

WASHINGTON — As the House moved toward a vote last week on a bipartisan budget plan modeled on the deficit reduction blueprint of a White House commission, Washington’s conservative and liberal influence machines swung into action.

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Representative Steve LaTourette, Republican of Ohio, sponsored a bipartisan budget plan with Representative Jim Cooper of Tennessee.

Within hours, Grover Norquist’sAmericans for Tax Reform joinedHeritage Action for America, the Club for Growth, the Heritage Foundationand assorted conservative bloggers in coming out hard against the plan as an unacceptable tax increase. On the left, the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, and research groups like the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities denounced the effort as a sham, disguised as the Bowles-Simpson commission report but tilted to the right.

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