A lot of discussion about the deal to keep government running – some saying Boehner blew it, others saying he was a master strategist. The big debate, right now, is over who won it. That, to me, is entirely unimportant. The most important thing is who lost: Obama and his Democrats.
First and foremost it must be remembered that if the Democrats thought they would have won the battle over a government shut down, they would have shut it down in a heart beat. Absolutely no question about that – the only reason they agreed to a deal is because they must have done some internal polling and it showed the American people trending towards the GOP or, at best, at least not trending in favor of the Democrats in a shut down situation. No, I don’t have proof of this – no one ever will. But it is none the less certain – Democrats agreed to a deal because they felt it was the best option in regards to their political future.
One has to think about what the deal did – it turned a $40 billion Democrat spending increase in to a genuine, $38 billion cut. Remember, most of the time when we talk about cuts to federal spending it is really just a reduction in the rate of growth. In Democrat-land, which has ruled such debates until just recently, if you spent $10 billion last year and would like to spend $20 billion this year, then if you end up spending $19 billion, that is a $1 billion cut. Times have changed – and now we have a genuine reduction in the amount of spending. Not much. Not nearly enough. But Democrats gave in on it rather than shut down the government. This is a first.
And, so, we know what to do – keep forcing things to a shut down crisis and watch them back down. No, they won’t back down enough and we daren’t press too far, too fast lest our desire to cut back fire on us. But, keep pressing. Cut, all the time. Every bill that gets sent up to the Senate should have some form of deficit reduction in it – and make them real cuts. That way when the inevitable deal is cut, we can still carry home at least some genuine reduction in spending.
The people are on our side, the Democrats are running scared – their whole existence now is just to hold on to as much Big Government as they can…our job is to keep pushing the limit and then work for victory in 2012.
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