Numerous GOP and Democratic sources on and off Capitol Hill tell National Journal that the outline of the deal is as follows: up to $39 billion in cuts from the 2010 budget, $514 billion in spending for the defense budget covering the remainder of this fiscal year, a GOP agreement to abandon controversial policy riders dealing with Planned Parenthood and the EPA, and an agreement to pass a “bridge” continuing resolution late Friday night to keep the government operating while the deal is written in bill form.As many have already said, it totally depends what's being cut. Not to mention, we're still in a teetering economy. Why is the government cutting demand in this kind of economy? (Other than to hurt Obama's re-elect by ensuring the recovery stalls.) It's a tad crazy, if you ask any sane economist. As Ezra Klein just reminded us in a tweet:
Estimates of 2011 job losses from $60b in cuts ran from 200,000 to 700,000. $39b in cuts would mean about 120,000 to 450,000 jobs lost.It will be interesting to see what we actually "won" in this negotiation. (It will also be interesting to see how many jobs CBO says the Democrats just agreed to kill in the interests of not having to explain to the American people that spending is actually good in a weak economy.) And getting them to give up bad things they were going to do is not winning. That's the old hostage-takers game we played in December - so long as they let go some of the hostages, we'll cave on their other demands.
More from National Journal:
Democrats appear to have accepted an increased level of cuts in exchange for the GOP dropping the rider.Glad we didn't reward them for trying to hurt women. Kind of like paying Bristol Palin $262,000 for getting pregnant out of wedlock. It's hardly a disincentive for next time. As Sam Stein just tweeted:
Who could possibly have predicted a deal where the dems concede cuts and the GOP concedes on riders. It's amazing they figured this out.
So in essence, The Rs asked for twice as much and got half of it. What did we ask for? What did we get?
