There was an article about this in the Economist recently that I thought was pretty good. The article argued that the Republicans had a point initially. Obama and his administration weren't making any positive moves to substantially reduce spending, which is obviously going to have to be the better part of the savings. However, once the Republicans got "in swing", they wouldn't let go, even though Obama's most recent offer promised to take a full 83% of the savings from spending cuts, and only 17% from tax raises (which in this case are really just the cancellation of tax cuts anyway). So after starting strong, the Republicans seem to have fallen into simple and completely irresponsible intransigence.