Big/small deal: Political analysis

In my last post I discussed some of the fiscal aspects of the deal--the simple math, walking back part of the sequester, some fees--mostly small stuff.

The bigger impact of the deal is that it's a two-year budget. There won't be a government shutdown for two years. This is an even longer period than that covered by the August 2011 deal, which laid out the budget until after the next big election. Why is this for a longer period, instead of until after the next election? A good question to ponder.

The deal doesn't include debt ceiling increases. Why? To allow the Tea Party congressional members to do a bit of grandstanding and vote against the debt ceiling several times. The debt ceiling increases will pass with enough votes from Republicans and amid charges of RINOism and treason. Yawn.

The Tea Partyers and their organizations are trying to raise a ruckus over this deal, but John Boehner told them to shut up. Besides, it's a done deal because THE HOUSE ALREADY PASSED IT!!!!! Wow, that was fast, and was planned to be that way. The House gets to adjourn and soon the Senate will rubberstamp the deal too. And everyone goes home for Christmas unlike last year. If you're taking a Christmas trip to a national park or monument, they'll be open and staffed. [House vote: GOP 169-62, Dem 162 -32.]

The Tea Party is a clear loser in this. The only leverage they'll have is the very dangerous debt-default-no-debt-ceiling-increase gambit. Their numbers aren't high enough to carry out that dynamite trick, but they can still make noise about it. This article points out that Paul Ryan gains stature as an adult politician when you need one. No one is writing the same about Patty Murray (I just checked). She's still a hack in my book, but she can be a good little sock puppet for Harry Reid when he needs her.

So, what will the two parties do in the next two years? They could start the really tough negotiations on Medicare, Medicaid, and, to a lesser extent, Social Security. They could lob mudballs at each other for the next 11 months until the 2014 midterm elections. The GOP could continue its Cold Civil War, and it could completely explode. Since it doesn't take that many people to negotiate, we could have all this possibilities playing out at the same time. Any negotiations that occur will be only exploratory because each side will want to wait for the outcome of the midterm elections in hope for an improvement in their position. (I should clarify who might negotiate: the establishment GOP, the establishment Dems, certainly not the Tea Party GOP.)

This is a better outcome than I was expecting. They compromised without kicking and screaming, and actually changed the terms from the previous testy agreement. That shows a modicum of flexibility where I hadn't expected any. Wow. Merry Christmas, everyone. Peace on Earth, goodwill to men.

Image: itmakessenseblog.com

Big news about a small deal

Hooray! The budget deal was done with a few days to spare.

This isn't really a surprise. The hard work came in convincing the GOP to start negotiating and stop trying to defund Obamacare. So the real accomplishment was achieved get in October and consisted of getting the GOP to stop being crazy and act like adults. Since that deal, the adults have been in charge, and the adults were able to make a deal by splitting the difference. Of course, any fifth grader can probably average $967 and $1058 and get an answer close to $1012; it takes adults to do the math when it's billions.

The harder work was walking back some of the sequester spending cuts and putting other cuts or revenues in their place. The new revenues (called fees) are getting the press notice. The most notable one is the increase in the federal fee for airport security that's added onto the cost of airline tickets. This fee is increasing a non-painful $2.50 per ticket. It means that less general revenue (such as income taxes) will be needed to subsidize airport security, freeing the money for other spending, of course. This fee hike seems fair to me--it's not huge, it's not soaking one group, it's making the service pay for itself more. That's all good.

But what about those other cuts, which were supposed to be more targeted? I looked it up and it's the same cutting "waste and abuse." I hope they have actually done their homework and identified waste they can cut and therefore save actual money, not vapor money. But it's not really belt-tightening...

...except for federal employees, some of whom will now have to contribute more to their pension funds. This sounds fair too. It broadens the pain among the federal workers, who've suffered somewhat less than private sector workers.

The money that's been freed up is being split equally between defense and non-defense spending, so both sides are getting a small extra helping from the pot. That means there's not much budget discipline in this deal. It's sliding back from what the sequester tried to achieve--actual reduction in spending. I don't know how much of the sequester will actually go into effect. One article said 50% of what was planned for 2014 and 2015. So much for our collective attempts to rein in federal spending. We didn't even maintain half of round 1 of the cuts. We are sad wimps indeed.

I'd really like to see spending reduced in a gradual way, with the least effective spending targeted first. But Dems are set on protecting all their favored projects and so are the GOP. No one wants to give up anything on their side for the greater good. Sigh.

Image: opb.org

Extras. Analysis from the Heritage Foundation. The analysis of the airline fee increases is obviously muddled, which I discovered by following the link they helpfully provided. Some numbers from WaPo, an overview from the Atlantic Wire.

Short: Patty Murray shows she's a hack

If the Harry Reid is smart (and I think he is), he's probably gotten Patty Murray to stop saying that the Dems are happy to go over the fiscal cliff because it will give them better leverage in 2013. It's not as dumb as the Teapublicans in the House proclaiming that they won't raise the debt ceiling, but it's in the same ballpark, and no senator should be there.

As an elected representative in a party that hopes to do OK in the next election, Murray shouldn't be saying that she's OK with people taking a major hit in their paychecks. You don't want to spite everyone to get leverage in a negotiation. The GOP was doing that last July over the debt ceiling, as it wasn't good for their favorability ratings. Did Murray somehow learn the lesson backwards?

Now I'll be looking for the signs that some of the Dems senators took her to the woodshed and made sure she learned the lesson right this time.

 Patty Murray needs a minder...

Image: huffingtonpost.com