A deal was reached at the eleventh hour (literally) to keep funding the government for another week, until a final vote on the 2011 budget. It’s a little ridiculous that we’re talking about finally passing the 2011 budget in April, but that’s where we are. Reading around the blogosphere, reactions are mixed as to who “won” the latest battle of the budget.
Chris Stirewalt at Fox News has a piece describing how John Boehner gained his “budget victory” only a week after being the equivalent of political dead meat. Stirewalt gives three key reasons why Boehner brought the Republicans out on top of the budget struggle:
- He expertly managed the low expectations of skeptics and Democrats
- Picked the perfect time to unleash Paul Ryan and his Path to Prosperity budget plan that will cut up to $6 trillion from the deficit
- Exercised great patience in not reaching an agreement with Obama and the Democrats too soon
Stacy McCain at The Other McCain thinks the “budget crisis” was averted, but Boehner gave up too much, in particular the provision in the Republican’s proposal that would strip funding from abortion provider Planned Parenthood.
OK, fine: Then show me one important liberal criticizing Obama and Democrats for giving up too much on this “compromise.” You can’t, because the Democrats gave up exactly nothing. It is therefore not a “compromise” in any meaningful sense of the word, which is why there is not one peep of criticism from, inter alia, Alan Colmes. Ace shrugs in weary exhaustion, and that’s OK, just so long as nobody expects us to pretend that the GOP has done anything meaningful to live up to its fiscal-conservative rhetoric.
At the Puffington Host, Craig Crawford definitely thinks the Dems lost:
President Obama acknowledged after the last-minute deal that the planned cuts were “painful” and not what he would have preferred. No kidding. This new plan is nearly $80 billion cheaper than the budget he had originally proposed.
GOP leaders shrewdly staked their negotiations on social changes they probably knew would never fly. By “sacrificing” those aims in the end game they clearly won more cuts from Democrats. And to pacify their conservative base they also won Senate agreement for upcoming votes on proposals such as defunding Planned Parenthood. If this debate was about pushing Obama to accept more cuts than what many Democrats wanted, it looks like Republicans won.
It’s interesting to read the reactions to tiny, tiny, cuts in a budget that needs to be cut by trillions of dollars. All this political gamesmanship over essentially meaningless spending cuts makes me wonder just how serious we are about addressing the real budget issues we’re facing. It’s worth posting Paul Ryan’s visual comparison of the Path to Prosperity budget proposal versus the status quo that Obama wants to keep in place. The important thing in this presentation is the terminal date: if we don’t do something significant soon, the whole thing collapses in 2037.
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