I just watched the press statements from Paul Ryan and Patty Murray.
The details are being described all around as “modest” and a time out. The key is that nothing much was accomplished as to the overall budget trajectory. There also was “sequester relief,” meaning that one of the only things restraining spending was weakened (Ryan justified that by saying that new sequester cuts were mostly from the military).
While there are no “new taxes,” beleaguered airline passengers will see new ticket fees. But it’s not a tax!
Most of the MSM headlines are predictable — Congress is working again!
NBC summarizes the “deal” as follows:
The deal won quick praise from House Speaker John Boehner, Ohio, the Republican speaker whose dogged budget negotiation strategies had contributed to a government shutdown in October.
“While modest in scale, this agreement represents a positive step forward by replacing one-time spending cuts with permanent reforms to mandatory spending programs that will produce real, lasting savings,” Boehner said in a statement.
The framework would set spending levels above the $967 billion cap established by the sequester; the budget for 2014 would be set at $1.012 trillion, and the budget for 2015 would be $1.014 trillion. Appropriators will be charged with detailing the particular spending within those limits.
The increased spending was financed in part through $85 billion in reforms and “non-tax revenue,” while also providing $63 billion in sequester relief split between military and non-military spending. Ryan said the proposal would reduce the deficit by $23 billion without raising taxes.
Though the tentative agreement falls far short of a “grand bargain” that solves overarching fiscal issues through a combination of new taxes and entitlement reforms, the agreement would offer some stability to government funding after several years of governing characterized by stopgap spending measures.
The deal also leaves some key elements facing Congress unsolved. Continued unemployment benefits, which Democrats want to authorize before the end of the year, are not part of the agreement. One idea under discussion, per a senior Senate Democratic aide, is agreeing to hold a separate vote on unemployment insurance this week.
Ryan and Murray shuttled back and forth between meetings with each other and their respective parties’ leadership throughout the day on Wednesday. Each said their leadership was supportive of the agreement, which helped facilitate the successful negotiations.
Updates:
Pres Obama on budget deal: "It’s balanced, and includes targeted fee increases and spending cuts…"
— Shannon Bream (@ShannonBream) December 10, 2013
Budget agreement reduces deficit w/o raising taxes, makes smarter spending cuts, protects nat’l security http://t.co/RbdFHV1uZE
— John Boehner (@SpeakerBoehner) December 10, 2013
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Comments
>>”The deal won quick praise from House Speaker John Boehner…”
Not just praise, but “quick” praise. It must be God awful.
I need no other reason to oppose it.
The credibility of Ryan and Boehner have just arrived at point zero.
We are really screwed methinks..
Obama: “It’s balanced…”
We are screwed.
This feels like one of those proposals that’ll look worse and worse the longer wonks drill down into the details.
You mean that someone has to actually read the Budget Deal to find out what’s in it?
Evidently not..
What the hell happened to Paul Ryan? What a weird fizzling out of whiz-kid promise into hidebound RINO duplicity and stupidity.
Áre you listening to Ryan on Levin?
So disappointing. Weasel.
Maybe he was swept off of his feet by Patty Murray
Nothing happened. Ryan’s always been a RINO. People thought that because he made some fiscal conservative nods that that meant he was one of us. He never was, never has been, never will be. He said what he thought we wanted to hear.
Maybe he just looked conservative standing next to Mitt Romney, kind of like me looking skinny standing next to Michael Moore.
A bad deal is better than no deal???
I don’t smell none too good from here..
My instantaneous reaction on reading the headline about a “budget agreement”: “Oh, swell. Whose farm did the $@*$ GOP give away THIS time?”
The GOP is well postured to use the debt ceiling to repeal O’care, but this “deal” undoes that. Wimpy. Major bad.
Ryan was bragging the deal will cut $23 billion in deficit spending over 10 years which, anyone who hasn’t recieved Common Core teaching, is $2.3 billion per year. They spend that in about 2 hours and the deal isn’t/can’t be binding on future congresses. So the losers in the GOP snatch defeat from the jaws of victory since the sequester was saving us much more than that. It’s time for a 3rd party in this country. The leaders in todays Republican party in DC is more concerned with going along to get along, to get reelected and to hold onto the power they have. Conservitive views are not wanted just our votes. Screw them.
They are either captured by conflicts of interest or perhaps the administration has collected sensitive information which leaves them vulnerable to blackmail.
re: collected sensitive information
Collected or manufactured. The court of public opinion is readily swayed by perception.
Our productivity is still around 3%, right? I would like to see how they intend to motivate economic, not debt, growth of around 7% per annum, which would at least permit us to break even, if not actually pay down the $17 trillion federal debt.
So it includes new taxes, although they jump through hoops not to call them taxes, and program cuts which are only reductions in the *planned* rate of growth, and the sequester cuts which were pretty pathetic in the first place are now going to be “revised” which means cranked back up to where the spending was before.
Somebody check to see if Paul has been replaced by a Democrat wearing a mask, please.
You can trust Paul Ryan like you trust John Boehner.
Patty and Patsy
How solvent is the federal UI?
If this tax were visible to “working” people- they’d effing run to DC with pitch forks.
So raise that tax… but make damn sure it goes on everyone’s W2 so they can see how much free stuff costs.
If only someone had seen this coming and warned about it in September!
Oh, yeah, they did, it was me.
Boehner and Cantor wanted to pass a “clean” CR and get past it so the bad press Obama had been pilloried with since August over Egypt, Syria, and Iran could continue unabated. That would have kept the sequester in place for another full year.
But the Cruzniks had to support their man’s grandstanding, which accomplished nothing but giving Obama a break for a month and hurting the Republican brand (since even pluralities of Republicans and of those opposed to PPACA were against the shutdown as a tactic to “defund” it). Oh, and letting Cruz build his 1.5 million sucker mailing list for fundraising.
As a result, we settled for a short term deal that gave Democrats another crack at breaking the sequester, just as I warned.
Thanks to Ted Cruz and the loonies who backed him! Great job! Now hurry to blame someone else for your mistakes, mmmkay?
I dunno.
This govt gets more tax revenue to spend each year than any in the history of the world. Yet they blow past it to the tune of hundreds of billions.
And when have the Repubs EVER been willing to change that? Can you come up with any instances?
Your chiding fails to impress. I have been hearing this, “wait until x” strategy since Bush I debated Reagan. Reagan wanted to cut taxes immediately, Bush I argued (he was–in retrospect–lying, sort of like the way Boehner, Mcconnel and Ryan are lying now) that ‘we’ must get spending under control first. Reagan would have none of it.
Earth to Estragon, the Republican party is currently a faction of the Ruling Class–they have no intention of reducing government.
I won’t speak for other Tea party types, but speaking for myself, I don’t give a damn about the Republican party per-se. If–and that is doubtful–but if we can turn them into a party of limited government, balanced budgets, sound money, and federalism, then well and good. It is worth trying that and that is what we are doing now.
It is a category error to assume that I am loyal to them. I am not. Frankly, I hate their freaking guts, but I am holding my nose in this stage of the war for liberty.
This Ryan cave/sellout/lie is just another brick in a road that goes back 30 years.
30 freaking years of lies is enough.
The GOP continues its 30 year quest to discover how to make an omelette without breaking any eggs. We are informed repeatedly by Estragon that the GOP ought not fight unless assured in advance of victory, lest they lose. Therefore, they elect not to fight at all. 0-0 is an undefeated record, after all.
I once saw a description of Ryan as ‘ mr earnest backstabber’.
We’ve all known someone like him.
Oh & can’t he do anything else with his life & his BEc than be a rep since 28? Many one who goes into politics at that age has gong to be weird.
Any approved spending will happen, no matter what.
Any approved cut that doesn’t happen now will never happen.
Ryan knows this. He’s a very smart guy. This isn’t him being naive. I get that he’s a squish on other stuff, but this is his wheelhouse. When you go soft on the issue for which you are the standard bearer it’s called “selling out”.
Ryan joins Rubio in my personal “dead to me” pile. I will point out that a “dead to me” Republican is still infinitely more desireable than any realistically conceivable democrat. While it is technically possible for the best ever democrat to be superior to the worst ever republican, it is also technically possible for 100 moon-sized meteors to slam into the earth in the same second, but you know I’m not loosing a lot of sleep over the possibility. I say all this because I reserve the right to vote for Rubio in the general after voting against him in the primary.
Here’s a nasty little tidbit about Ryan’s GOP budget compromise deal: It gives Harry Reid the right to raise taxes on a simple majority vote as opposed to the required 60+ votes currently in place. 51 votes in the senate to raise taxes.
Thanks, GOP. Great work.