No Grand Bargain, Saints Be Praised
By Habemas budgetum! Shortly after 6 p.m., House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan and Senate Budget Chair Patty Murray emerged behind the Senate studio podium and revealed the budget they and the conference committee had hammered out. Conservatives have warned that any budget that spent more than the sequestration limit — $967 billion — would be throatily opposed by them.
This budget would spend $1.012 trillion.
So Ryan (and to a lesser extent, Murray) would spend the 17 minute press conference explaining what was in the budget and why they had not sold out. This was easy for Murray: Her Democrats had prevented any cuts to Social Security or Medicare, the sort of entitlement reforms that the pundit class had been crying for and crying for.
For the reasons emphasized, I’ll take it.
…I supposed I technically haven’t won this bet yet, but…there obviously (and unsurprisingly) won’t be Social Security cuts and that’s the most important thing.