Let the great debate begin, Save Jerseyans.
Half the Republican world is breathing a sigh of relief this morning; in their eyes, the GOP avoided a potentially disastrous government shutdown that could’ve doomed their 2012 electoral prospects. But there are those in our party who believed anything less than Democrat surrender would be a failure.
Congressional Republican leaders don’t see it that way (via FoxNews):
“Here’s why: HR1 was originally to seek spending cuts of $32 billion until Tea Party conservatives insisted on more than $ 60 billion. House Speaker John Boehner won more cuts than he originally sought and got the Senate to agree to votes to defund the health care reform law and groups like the nation’s largest abortion provider Planned Parenthood – once votes Senate Majority leader Harry Reid said he’d never allow to come to the floor.Back on February 3, Reid called $32 billion in cuts “extreme” and “draconian.”
At a news conference New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., agreed, “I happen to think some of their cuts are extreme and go overboard. But every week they keep upping the ante and proposing extreme cuts.”
Over the next decade the cuts are expected to save hundreds of billions of dollars.
The deal mandates a host of studies and audits of Obama administration policies. It also blocks additional funds for the IRS sought by the Obama administration and bans federal funding of abortion in Washington, D.C.”
Whether you like this outcome or not… maybe that’s not the point? Conservative new media luminary Michelle Malkin has an interesting perspective:
“…when you’re dealing with people on the other side whose principles — if they can be called that — and priorities are so malignly warped, and you control only one of the three legs of the budget triad, how much can you hope to accomplish by fiat?
All of the talking head discussions that I have read and listened to concerning the budget negotiations share one commonalty: the tacit acceptance that it is only the Republicans who have to struggle with their fiscal principles, because everybody takes it as a given that the donks are only interested in playing stupid little games and scoring cheap political points.”
Win, lose or draw, a 2011 budget deal clears the table for a welcome discussion of Paul Ryan’s visionary 2012 budget proposal. That’s something most Republicans can rally around.
