Budget deal is either same old-same old or pragmatic step toward 2014

There are two ways of looking at the deal announced Tuesday night by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray.

Either the deal — which rolls back the 2011 sequestration budget ceiling by increasing federal spending from $967 billion to $1.012 trillion in 2014 — represents another cave by spineless congressional Republican leaders or a brainy, pragmatic decision to take the issue off the legislative calendar until after the 2014 election.

Either way, it's indisputable that the same GOP leaders who in August said defending sequestration was far more important than defunding Obamacare are in December surrendering major ground on ... sequestration. Go figure.

Heritage Action CEO Michael Needham said in a USA Today op-ed that the deal is "a step backward" because of the aforementioned spending increase.

But it's also a step backward, in Needham's view, because "diverting user fees to fuel bigger government is a tax," and because it "relies upon promises of future cuts that the demise of the sequester vividly illustrates cannot be counted on."

In any case, Needham notes, "Members of Congress will have to explain to their constituents what exactly they achieved by increasing spending, increasing fees and offering up another round of promises waiting to be broken."

The other view is that the deal represents "an acceptable percentage of a loaf," according to Washington Examiner senior political analyst Michael Barone, paraphrasing supply-side economist Tyler Cowen's initial assessment.

In other words, Barone said, "getting half a loaf, or even a quarter, is all you can realistically hope for when you have a majority in the House but not in the Senate and don't hold the White House ..."

This view recalls, even if, at 25 percent of the loaf, only faintly, Ronald Reagan's maxim that "my 80-percent friend is not my 20-percent enemy." (Question: Is your 75-percent enemy your 25-percent friend?)

Senate Democrats and a sizable chunk of the Senate Republicans will approve the deal, the former because it castrates sequestration and the latter because they think it enables them to claim to have "saved sequestration" or "cut spending."

In the House, Speaker John Boehner almost certainly has enough votes between supine Republicans and Democrats eager to join in the gutting of sequestration.

In other words, it's more business as usual in the nation's capital as taxes, spending and regulations all continue on steeply upward trajectories.

GOP Suffers Shutdown Shell Shock

December 11, 2013- Rush Limbaugh BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I had a number of e-mails from people who thought that I dropped the ball yesterday because I didn't mention the upcoming budget deal. People thought... The Stick-to-the-Issues Crowd thought that I had dropped the ball. I was spending too much time on jocularity and frivolous, fun things, when the Republicans were about to give away the bank in budget negotiations with Patty Murray and the Democrats.

I didn't drop the ball; I just didn't discuss it for a very simple reason: There's nothing I could have done. There's nothing I could have said on the radio yesterday. There's no interview I could've conducted that was going to change what happened. There is a simple fact, folks. The Republicans in Congress -- and I would say that this is probably true of the Republicans in Washington. They are suffering shell shock.

They are not moved at all by Obama's plummeting poll numbers. They are not moved at all by the problems people are having with Obamacare. They are in shell shock. I've described it as posttraumatic stress disorder. Whatever, they are literally afraid of one thing, and that is being blamed again for the government shutdown. That was the objective, to make sure there wasn't a government shutdown, and it didn't matter what was required.

If it meant funding Obamacare, which has happened, that's what they'd do. It's this simple. The Republicans didn't like the idea of defunding Obamacare. They didn't like the idea of a partial government shutdown. They're living in a different world. They believe that the country despises and hates them.

They believe that Obama is still universally loved and adored and that there is nothing they can do to overcome that.

They think that anything that goes against Obama's way is going to result in them being blamed, and it's an election year next year, and they don't want to get anywhere near another government shutdown. No matter the principle involved. No matter the issues involved. They just weren't gonna go there. I've never seen anything like this. I have never seen this degree of shell shock or whatever else you want to call it.

But my point, folks, is there was nothing I coulda said. There's nothing anybody coulda said yesterday, there's nothing anybody coulda said during the day. There was nothing anybody coulda said that was gonna change what was gonna happen in the Republican negotiating position on this budget -- and this is the first real budget in, what, two or three years? The Democrats finally did present a budget, and I'm telling you, I had conversations with Republicans in Congress.

Preventing another shutdown is all that mattered. They really, to this minute, believe that they may have been irreparably harmed by being blamed for the shutdown a couple of months ago. They are paralyzed. The fear of what the media will say and do and report has them paralyzed. I think, in large part, that's also why so many of them are talking about moving ahead with amnesty and so forth. Now, a number of conservative groups have reacted in totally warranted anger and outrage, and Boehner has lashed out at them.

I'm convinced he's gonna try to walk some of this back, but he's called them ridiculous.

One of the three groups is the Heritage Action Group, Heritage Foundation, our buddies there. Friday, grab... Let's see. Grab sound bite number four. This is Boehner, and this is this morning in Washington at a press conference talking about the tentative budget deal. Pelosi's not happy about it, by the way, 'cause it does not extend unemployment benefits in this horribly rotten Obama economy. She doesn't say "horribly rotten Obama economy," but that's what it is.

Anyway, reporter said, "Mr. Speaker, lot of conservative groups have put out statements blasting this budget deal. Are you worried?"

BOEHNER: You mean the groups that came out and opposed it before they ever saw it?

REPORTER: Yes, those groups. Are you worried --

BOEHNER: They're using our members, and they're using the American people for their own goals. This is ridiculous. Listen, if you're for more deficit reduction, you're for this agreement.

RUSH: Well, see, this is the point. There isn't any deficit reduction in this. There never is. There's not any serious deficit reduction here. They even gave away the sequester. It was hopeless, folks. You know me, I'm not obsessed with pessimism, or negativity, but I'm just telling you: There was nothing that could have been said yesterday by anybody that was going to change what happened. Now, the Republicans want to continue to complain about Obamacare, and they want to continue to complain about deficit spending.

But they hate the idea of another partial government shutdown. They just do. It isn't gonna happen no matter what, because they still haven't gotten over what they think is being blamed for it. Most people don't even remember. This is the thing. The disconnect with their own voters and base, I have never seen anything like it. They are so frightened of being blamed for another shutdown that they gave up parts of the sequester, which had been a hard line on spending.

The sequester was a bipartisan deal. It was Obama's idea. It was a Republican-Democrat achievement that really did help reduce the deficit -- part of it, anyway, the rate -- and this deal un-sequestered the sequester, and it increases spending in the near term for promises of some tiny long-term reductions to the tune of $2.5 billion a year. But now the Republicans in Congress believe that they now have an open field to continue to criticize Obamacare and talk about Obamacare in negative ways.

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