About the 2-year budget compromise

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About the 2-year budget compromise now signed by President Trump

From Guy Benson’s “Analysis: Let's Face It, Neither of These Awful Parties is Actually Serious About Fiscal Responsibility” at Townhall:

The biggest problem with the compromise is that abandons all pretense of fiscal restraint, and virtually guarantees more harmful and irresponsible can-kicking.  The GOP-led Congress has agreed to a two-year plan that will add $1.5 trillion to deficits over a decade, establishing a higher baseline from which "cuts" will be opposed, and on which additional spending will be built.  And Republicans have done so while surrendering a powerful mechanism (reconciliation) that allows them to pass budget policies without requiring the help of tax-and-spend Democrats (as they did on tax reform). 

Benson’s full article is here. Charles Hurt at Breitbart didn’t think much of it either:

Any time you hear Washington talk about bipartisan agreement, America, grab your wallet and run!

Once again, lawmakers in Washington have finally cut through all the thorny brambles of partisanship and discovered (yet again! yippie!) something they can all agree upon: spending scads and scads more of other people’s money that we don’t even have!

Support for military expenditures was a key talking point for Congress critters like Sean Duffy, who voted "yes." 

It’s still out-of-control spending. And back to Benson:

Here's what bothers me: Republicans didn't even really try.  They could have attempted a full-court press explaining the need for increased military funding, while arguing that in an era of $4 trillion in annual federal spending (up from less than $1.8 trillion in fiscal year 2000, just for some perspective), breaking caps on domestic spending is unnecessary.  Or they could have demanded that in exchange for some heightened domestic spending for discrete priorities, Democrats would have to agree to some modest and mathematically-essential entitlement reforms. 

Instead, we got this [via The Washington Examiner]:

In 2017, for the first time in the post-Tea Party era, Republicans finally gained unified control of government. They spent months blundering on healthcare, and ultimately reneged on their eight-year promise to repeal Obamacare. They have now agreed on a deal with Democrats that would blow up the spending caps that were a legacy of the Tea Party movement — to the tune of $300 billion over the next two years...The agreement would boost military spending by $165 billion above the 2011 caps and nonmilitary spending by $131 billion; it boosts emergency disaster relief spending by $90 billion (remember when the Tea Party Republicans believed emergency spending needed to be offset?); provides $6 billion in more money to fight opioid addiction; has $20 billion in infrastructure funding; it provides more funding for community health centers; and it repeals the Independent Payment Advisory Board, one of Obamacare’s cost-containment initiatives, without any significant alternative ideas to curb Medicare spending. Now, let’s get one thing clear. It's possible to rein in long-term debt while keeping taxes relatively low and military spending relatively high, but only if those policies are met with a dramatic strategy to restrain entitlements and other non-defense spending. But that’s not what Republicans are doing.

I had hoped for better. Reminder to self: the GOPe are members in good standing of the Uniparty.

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