It doesn’t look that bad thus far, so calm down.
As expected, left-leaning Beltway pundits are freaking the fuck out about yet another cave by Obama.
He compromised. He’s a shitty negotiator. He always gives the Republicans what they want. PRIMARY HIM!!!11one
Everyone rushed to judgment before the facts about the budget cuts were even released.
So how does it shake out now that the facts are rolling out? Pretty damn well, All Things Considered1:
Such moves permitted Obama to save favorite programs — Pell grants for poor college students, health research and “Race to the Top” aid for public schools, among others — from Republican knives.
The full details of Friday’s agreement weren’t being released until late Monday when it was officially submitted to the House. But the picture already emerging is of legislation financed with a lot of one-time savings and cuts that officially “score” as savings to pay for spending elsewhere, but that often have little to no actual impact on the deficit.
As a result of the legerdemain, Obama was able to reverse many of the cuts passed by House Republicans in February when the chamber passed a bill slashing this year’s budget by more than $60 billion. In doing so, the White House protected favorites like the Head Start early learning program, while maintaining the maximum Pell grant of $5,550 and funding for Obama’s “Race to the Top” initiative that provides grants to better-performing schools.
Obama also repelled Republican moves to cut $1 billion in grants for community health centers and $500 million from biomedical research at the National Institutes of Health, while blocking them from “zeroing out” the AmeriCorps national service program and subsidies for public broadcasting [NPR].
Instead, the cuts that actually will make it into law are far tamer, including cuts to earmarks, unspent census money, leftover federal construction funding, and $2.5 billion from the most recent renewal of highway programs that can’t be spent because of restrictions set by other legislation. Another $3.5 billion comes from unused spending authority from a program providing health care to children of lower-income families.
From The Reid Report:
The negotiators grab fully one-third of the cuts — $10 billion worth, by targeting earmarks lawmakers, particularly Republicans, had already agreed to forego.
Another $5 billion comes from capping a Justice Department crime victims’ fund – by claiming savings for the whole fund even though they’re only capping a portion of it.
What isn’t in the bill? Riders to block funding for Planned Parenthood, the EPA, money to implement healthcare reform and Wall Street regulation, and money the NRA wanted cut in order to kill a program that helps stop people from running guns to Mexican drug dealers by gathering info on batch weapons purchases. Seriously. They wanted that.
What else was cut?
How about high speed rail money President Obama didn’t even ask for?
…
Phantom earmarks whose sponsors have died.
So, not the crappiest of deals, contrary to what the pundits would have you believe. It’s actually a fairly decent deal for Democrats, given how powerful the Teabillies are in Congress. Sure, Republicans started at a base line of $32 billion in cuts. Sure the Democrats were all, “No.Effing.Way.” at the time. (Eleventy-three dimensional chess!) And sure folks who are junkies watched with bated breath on Friday as a government shutdown was averted and a stopgap was implemented. And sure, Boehner’s political theater made it seem like he was totally going to shut the fucker down because of the 3% of non-federal funding — yes NON-federal funding — used by Planned Parenthood for abortion.
But what was Obama’s response when Boehner wanted to cut Planned Parenthood funding?
The Teabillies are pissed off about this budget deal:
The Tea Party is steamed over DC’s budget deal.
While President Obama, Senate majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) hailed Friday night’s eleventh hour accord to avoid a government shutdown as “historic,” several Tea Party members did not feel the same way.
Tea Party darling Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) called the $39-billion slashing deal a “disappointment.”
Millions of Americans expected $100 billion in cuts and “wanted to make sure their tax dollars stopped flowing to the nation’s largest abortion provider, and who wanted us to defund ObamaCare,” Bachmann said in a statement.
“Instead, we’ve been asked to settle for $39 billion in cuts, even as we continue to fund Planned Parenthood and the implementation of ObamaCare.’
Bachmann, who is considering running for President in 2012, voted against a temporary bill to keep the government running while the deal moves through Congress.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky) echoed Bachmann’s sentiments.
The stopgap measure does “not set us on a path to fixing the spending and debt problems our country is facing. There is not much of a difference between a $1.5 trillion deficit and a $1.6 trillion deficit-both will lead us to a debt crisis that we may not recover from,” said Rand.
The $39 billion in cuts for the rest of the fiscal year was far more than Democrats originally wanted to concede, but not nearly enough to satisfy the appetite for budget-slashing among Tea-Party backed Republicans, who had called for axing $61 billion.
The deal spared Planned Parenthood and environmental regulation riders the GOP had been pushing for.
Reid had repeatedly blamed the Tea Party for the breakdown in budget negotiations, placing Boehner in a sticky situation to make a deal with the Democrats and satisfy those in his own ranks, including Tea Partiers.
The deal is still tentative, and Congress passed a one-week stopgap budget to put the bill in legislative form.
A CNN poll demonstrates that The People are not participating in the Great Beltway Freakout, so I really wish Ezra Klein, and Rachel Maddow, and Paul Krugman would simmer the hell down for a minute. (Here are the items on which Democrats “caved“: “a provision blocking already illegal taxpayer-funded abortions in the District of Columbia, and a Boehner pet request to fund vouchers for D.C. students to attend private schools. And they did allow $2.2 billion to be cut from an experimental program designed to encourage state cooperatives to come together to provide health insurance.”)
Look, it’s not about the deficit, to these Teabilly jackwads. It’s about abortion. I bet if Obama offered to back a constitutional amendment banning and criminalizing abortion in exchange for a deficit increase of one trillion dollars, these women-hating assholes would go for it.
Hopefully we can have a serious discussion about how it makes NO FUCKING SENSE to continue giving tax cuts to the rich while planning to privatize Medicare.
You want to talk about pulling the plug on grandma? That’s what Ryan’s plan would do no matter how “courageous” some members of the Washington Asshat Brigade think the plan is.
Oooooh! Giving more money to rich people! Now that’s some daring and bold stuff right there! Stop it before you give us all heart attacks! — which will promptly kill most of us because Bieber knows you don’t want your rich-ass cronies to pay their far share to help us… you know… not have heart attacks (through preventive care and whatnot).
A break. Give one to me.
UPDATE: This from commenter vcthree is information to be considered:
As for the vouchers; for all the people freaking out about that? It’s nice that you have concern over that issue, but having lived in the D.C. metro for decades and following the school shenanigans there? What people don’t understand is that vouchers have been an issue in that city forever, and they have overwhelming support and have for years. Never mind the experts from New York or California or Maryland; nearly 3 in 4 citizens in the District support vouchers. And given that one-time mayoral candidate and (former?) D.C. councilman Kevin Chavous has been haranguing the president for two years about this; that the administration threw JB that carrot isn’t shocking to me. D.C. likes the voucher program, and it was an easy concession to make.
1 rimshot.
[via The Reid Report]
[cross-posted at Balloon Juice]
I know people were screeching about the D.C. provisions, but you pointed out a specific note about the abortion funding: it’s basically redundant. Thus if it’s already illegal, and this new budget reinforces that…what’s the issue? Well, other than for certain progressives to assume the worst–as if this is going to lead to more concessions down the line on Planned Parenthood, which the president rejected out of hand in this negotiation (at their urging!)?
As for the vouchers; for all the people freaking out about that? It’s nice that you have concern over that issue, but having lived in the D.C. metro for decades and following the school shenanigans there? What people don’t understand is that vouchers have been an issue in that city forever, and they have overwhelming support and have for years. Never mind the experts from New York or California or Maryland; nearly 3 in 4 citizens in the District support vouchers. And given that one-time mayoral candidate and (former?) D.C. councilman Kevin Chavous has been haranguing the president for two years about this; that the administration threw JB that carrot isn’t shocking to me. D.C. likes the voucher program, and it was an easy concession to make.
Of course, the people in the ivory tower enclaves of the collective Beltway Media, and by extension, the New York Mainstream Concern Crew , wouldn’t understand this. Because to them, everything is a zero-sum game. Tired of them all.
FanTASTIC comment. I didn’t know that about the vouchers.
I’m incorporating “New York Concern Crew” into my lexicon as of yesterday. I love it.
By all means, do. This could lead into a whole other thing about cable news media, but…I’m saving this for a post, and I need to research it properly before I go spouting off.
Why do people forget that the teabaggers or as someone once called them and I kid you not he called them “teamonkeys” I almost fell outta the chair when he called them that.
But anyway, you know the teabaggers are going to complain and spew racism no matter what, they never said thank you to Obama when they got their Bush tax cuts extended fuck them. Besides Boehner’s sorry ass is afraid of the teabaggers and Cantor is about as dumb as Bachmann, so you know they were going to lie.
And those on the left want to complain about Obama compromising when they were told to stay home by Hamsher and Greenwald in 2010 and they did, so why are they even complaining???
But the Democrats have played their cards correctly, let the GOP keep talking about destroying the economy, abolishing medicare and social security and doing away with the labor movement those things have never played well for the GOP.
Show me where Hamsher and Greenwald said don’t vote. Didn’t happen. The problem with Obama’s compromise is, even if it was just low-hanging fruit (which I’d dispute), that’s not the end of the cuts. The GOP will be back for deeper cuts in the fall. Then the low-hanging fruit is gone and what’s he going to do?
Why do you think the House is full of teabaggers? And Medicare Part D cost $600 billion which is unpaid for thanks to GOP and you get mad because of roughly $38 billion dollars when the teabaggers wanted 60+ billion in cuts.
That’s why President Obama will address the GOP Armageddon budget later in the week. There is not much one can do when the teabaggers have the majority in the House that’s why you hold them responsible. I’m sure Obama will address the GOP’s Path to Poverty plan for America.
huh? what? dude, GOTV and sweep them out of office if you don’t want cuts. Also, it doesn’t matter what or how much Obama cuts, Republicans will ALWAYS WANT cuts – they live, breathe and die cuts. The idea that giving them something now makes them come back for more is absurd. They will always demand cuts.
I think we’re talking about this issue and not what would should may might maybe will happen later.
I think that’s the issue I have with a lot of pouters on the left; that no matter what, they always complain based on what they think will happen and not necessarily what did occur. They were all lathered up on what was cut before even learning the details. Not that they are fully to blame; many leftists in the media were blasting the deal beforehand as well.
Fo a moment, why don’t they calm the fuck down before the knee jerk reactions? It gets harder and harder to take them seriously, particularly since they seem to get it wrong more often than not.
Just flat-out loved what Colbert did to John Kyl last night over Kyl’s “not intended to be a factual statement” disclaimer after his Planned Parenthood tirade in the Senate in the runup to all this.
(Kyl said Planned Parenthood spent 90% of their budget on abortions – when it’s really 3%, and when asked, his office said that it was “not intended to be a factual statement” by way of reply to CNN.)
Just go here: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/381282/april-11-2011/pap-smears-at-walgreens and watch. The Kyl thing begins about 2 minutes in.
Now I’m waiting for someone (anyone?) to do in a serious way what Colbert did in satire last night, and equate something not intended to be factual with what we civilians call it. You know, a LIE.
This is the opposition we’re facing. And the inertia on the part of damn near everyone in the press.
Why is it exactly that we have to put up with “our own side” howling and stamping their feet in the corner? Why is it that the delusional Kucinich backers even exist? Can the little nutcase win statewide election in Ohio first before he’s taken seriously as a national candidate? Can the third-party screechers and “primary Obama” nutcases put up one viable option they can bring to the table?
Or are a lot of them really Republican ratfuckers in Dem drag? Greenwald is pure Cato institute – look into that!
Speaking of Glennifer, he is at it again with his weekly bitchfest. No, is it not about the baby Jesus Manning, but about how Obama’s negotiating betrayed progressives and….WHAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
Yeah, it works with that crew of bobbysoxers only if you do not bother looking at the facts of what was actually the cuts in the budget. But since when did facts ever effect that group of faux progressives? That would take time from renting their condo space in Greenwald’s colon.
I’m worried that the teabaggers in congress won’t pass this budget after all. But if the PL keeps whining about it maybe the ‘baggers will like it more.
Where’s SuperKucinic? Has he weighed in yet or is he in the process of impeaching President Obama?
Brave Sherrod Brown is circulating a Sternly Worded Letter to Obama among Senate Dems, warning him not to gut Medicare, as he has no intention of doing, so that he can beat his chest on Thursday and pretend he told Obama what to do.
LOL @ the x-post thread on Balloon Juice … One of the reasons I’m limiting myself to Randinho’s soccer posts is because I got spooked finding myself agreeing with Loblaw one day (it was about how WyldPirate is giant idiot, which is super obvious, but still …). Guess it wasn’t a fluke.
Oh and shocker: there are stupid, non-evidence-having lefties as much as there are stupid, non-evidence-having righties.