Actually, the metaphor is more like the Titanic, while sinking, takes on a shipment of 1000 more chairs (apply your math accordingly) - and, noting that the ship is sinking and can’t take on any more weigh lest it sink faster, the captain grudgingly agrees to reduce the acquisition by 10 chairs. The boat is still sinking, faster now thanks to the addition of 990 unnecessary and unaffordable chairs. The captain then lauded for having reduced the load and slowing the demise.
“The captain then lauded for having reduced the load and slowing the demise.”
He “Reduced the deficit in a responsible way”.
If one wants to use a sinking-ship analogy, a better one might be that of a boat which starts to take on water and has a crew which, recognizing that a small hole in the bottom of a fast-moving boat will let out water, decides to drill some holes. As the water level in the boat starts to increase, the crew decides the problem is that it isn't drilling holes fast enough, and thus redoubles its efforts.
Drilling holes to let out water could be reasonable in some limited scenarios (provided that one could close the holes when they were no longer useful). Unfortunately, if the notion that "holes are useful" becomes accepted dogma without the qualifiers "in certain limited scenarios, but they're generally harmful" it becomes very easy to fall into the trap of thinking that when drilling holes fails to stop the ship's intake of water, such failure is a result of not drilling enough holes, rather than recognizing that the newly-drilled holes could in fact be a bigger problem than the original leak.
I wish Republicans would grow a spine and recognize this principle. If some people are calling for a thousand holes, trying to compromise with them to only drill a hundred is not useful. What's necessary is to stand firm to the fact that the reason for not drilling 1,000 holes isn't that the resources for drilling those holes could be better spent elsewhere, but rather that drilling holes is counter-productive. A compromise on the number of holes to be drilled will make such argument impossible.