Awright, think through THAT post title. Lumosity.com has nothing on me.
So here are the professed facts: 2014 discretionary spending (about a quarter of the federal budget, which is itself stunning) will be "uncapped" by $45 billion and an additional $20 billion in 2015. This $65 billion will be "offset" in the last two years of the current ten year period by extending the Sequester an additional two years, fiddling with federal pensions, and federal user fee hikes. Which is to say, federal pensions will increase even faster, federal user fees will explode - or, if they can't explode fast enough, income taxes will explode to compensate - and the Sequester will be fiddled with to compensate - ten years from then, of course.
Newt Gingrich calls Murray-Ryan "a bad deal" and "dishonest". Rush Limbaugh accused House Republicans of being "paralyzed with fear". Sean Davis is again demanding that Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy resign in disgrace.
Seeing as I'm not, have never been, and never will be a basher of my own party, I am incapable of generating such fratricidal bile. But this time, I can understand where it's coming from.
Back during Shutdowngeddon in early-mid October, a lot of these same voices were saying pretty much the same things about the House GOP leadership, with the same tone, and at the same volume. I stood, stoutly and resolutely, on the other side. I considered the forcing of a government shutdown to be a foolish mistake - not out of "fear paralysis," but because of the goal the tactic was supposed to accomplish: defunding ObamaCare. It was simply never going to happen. Republicans simply had no leverage. The Democrats had ObamaCare completely in hand. They occupied the high ground, they had a crushing advantage in "weaponry" (White House, Senate, media), and they didn't have to do anything except mow down House Pachyderms when Tea Partiers forced them to make that Pickett's charge straight into propaganda hell. Those of us who predicted it before and during the massacre were vilified by TPers as "the surrender caucus". But we were completely, and depressingly, vindicated.
That was then. This is now. And the roles are - were - completely the opposite.
The one victory House Republicans have won in the past three years is the Budget Control Act of 2011 - the Sequester. It started as an Obama bluff to trick House Republicans into looking hypocritical on controlling spending by disproportionately loading down the Pentagon with spending cuts. Instead, Speaker Boehner called O's bluff, and later that of the so-called "Super Committee," and as a result we have seen the first two consecutive years of lower discretionary spending - not a reduction in the rate of increase, not a slowing of spending growth, but actual declines in the dollar amount of discretionary outlays - in six decades.
Is it imprecise? Sure. Indiscriminate? Yup. A chain saw instead of a scalpel? Absolutely. Was any better spending control mechanism possible in the Age of The One? Hell, no. Getting the Sequester itself was a mid-level miracle. Which means - meant - that it is - was - a highly prized possession that needs - needed - to be defended and retained at all costs.
That brings us to Murray-Ryan.
Sorry, folks, but I just can't get all that hot & bothered over $65 billion over two years. As Yuval Levin observed yesterday, that's a rounding error in a budget this gigantic. What is worth a frustrated twerk or two is, as Sean Davis pointed out, that we're only two years into the Sequester era and they're already blowing the caps, which doesn't lend any sort of reassurance to the promises of offsetting them on the back side. And that's apart from the simple fact that ten years means five Congresses and as many as three presidents and frigg knows how many changes of fiscal and economic circumstances. Put another way, what about a year from now? Will there be more Sequester "adjustments" to 2015 and maybe 2016 and 2017? And what of the year after that? And so on.
It's like big contracts in the NFL; a quarterback or running back or wide receiver or pass-rushing defensive end signs a hundred million dollar free agent deal, and we think, "Wow, that's a lot of money"; but the only guaranteed money is the signing bonus - say, thirty million. Typically the bulk of the remaining dough is - you guessed it - back-loaded at the end of the contract and, in practice, is never paid out because it was never intended to be.
I call it the Wimpy Principle (at 2:42):
Or like the guy who's always bumming money off of you, and when you try to pin him down on when he'll pay it back, he replies, "Later". In practice, "later" usually means "never". So it is with these budget "deals". The increased spending and/or tax hikes always happen now, and the offsetting spending reductions are always deferred to "Tuesday". It's how the feds wound up in a position where a meat cleaver approach to spending discipline became necessary in the first place.
All of that being said, House Republicans haven't surrendered all, most, or even much of the Sequester. 92% of it is still intact - for now. What's maddening to the Right is that they didn't have to surrender any of it, any more than the Dems did ObamaCare back in October. And yet 'Pubbies (again) broke the cardinal rule of negotiating: Never negotiate with yourself before you even get to the negotiating table. Remember what the Dems were wanting from this budget go-round? Another huge tax increase, total Sequester repeal, an additional hundred billion smackers in discretionary spending for FY 2014 alone. Well, they're not getting the first two and only a tiny fraction of the third - but they are getting something, when they shouldn't have gotten anything. There was absolutely no reason for Paul Ryan to give any ground whatsoever.
And now we arrive at Shutdowngeddon II.
Jonah Goldberg has the best argument I've seen for doing whatever is necessary to avoid another shutdown showdown:
[Barack] Obama is melting like an Ozian witch in the shower because of ObamaCare. The new NBC/WSJ poll is just plain brutal. His standing on almost every other issue has improved at least a little, but healthcare is still driving his overall approval down the drain.
It’s worth recalling that at one point or another both the “establishment” and the shutdown caucus have made the exact same argument: Don’t get in the way of the ObamaCare disaster. During the shutdown, the “establishment” said let it fail on its own. During the debate over the Upton bill, the shutdowners said, “No, no. Let it fail on its own.” I bring this up not to re-litigate all of the nastiness, but simply to note that both sides of the intramural conservative debate understand that ObamaCare’s unraveling is politically advantageous to Republicans — and the best argument in favor of getting rid of it. Politically, the best thing about the Ryan-Murray budget is that it helps keep the conversation on ObamaCare. A huge fractious battle over what amount to rounding errors in the budget and the debt could take the heat off Obama and hurt the GOP’s standing.
I think this speaks more to why Shutdowngeddon I was such a blunder than to a Shutdowngeddon II. If Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, et al had held their fire back in late September/early October and let the public learn what a cataclysm ObamaCare is first-hand, the PR battlefield would have been vastly more favorable to forcing a shutdown showdown to bring it down partially or wholly, and the Sequester wouldn't even have been at issue.
But leave that aside. Remember, again, that last time Democrats had something Republicans wanted to get rid of; this time, it was the other way around. And what Republicans possessed - the Sequester - is considerably more popular than ObamaCare has ever been. Also consider that since Republicans were using a shutdown to force changes to Red Barry's namesake, they were cast all that much easier as the side responsible for "shutting down the government". Now, it would be Democrats forcing a shutdown to get rid of something - a blunt mechanism of spending restraint - that the public strongly supports.
Bleep negotiations; all Boehner/Cantor/McCarthy/Ryan would have to do is pass a "clean" continuing resolution at Sequester levels - "settled law of the land" - and let the Donks, already quaking in terror over the ObamaCare PELE (Political Extinction Level Event), self-destruct even more by launching an all-out, maximally public war against fiscal responsibility that poll after poll says the American people are demanding.
Tell me again what Republicans would have to fear from such a scenario?
Exit question: Since Ryan has already compromised on the Sequester, what incentive do rank & file Democrats have to accept this deal? Why not vote it down, capitalize on GOP fear stink, and keep pushing for more concessions? They might even score another Hogzilla.
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