Quote from AAAintheBeltway:
I understand that is the spin, but I think it is a bad strategy that is intended to fail. Boehner wants to be able to say he "tried" but just couldn't get all the cuts, so can we now go back to business as usual, eg raising taxes to "share the burden" and logrolling for lobbyists.
By cutting all the lowhanging budget fruit first, he insures there will be fanatical opposition to the really tough stuff, and they will lose some of the "moderate" republicans. This piecemeal approach also gives the democrats the opportunity to vote for budget cutting, thereby insulating themselves from election attacks.
Obama and the Senate will never go along with serious pruning of the size and scope of government, so it is better to put it all on the table now and force a vote rather than drag it out and confuse matters. Unless of course you don't want to prevail in the first place, but only want to look like you're trying to do something.
It's bad politics and it's also bad as a negotiating strategy. You never want to preemptively make a concession. Instead, you wait till the last possible moment, then get something valuable in exchange for your concession. Boehner did the opposite. He folded early and got nothing. So either he's a remarkably poor negotiator or he had no intention of playing hardball in the first place. How do you think Michelle Bachmann would have played those cards?