The Spending Deal

Congress appears to have reached agreement on the bill for funding the government for the rest of the fiscal year. Spending will go down in absolute terms for the first time in recent memory, even if the decline is just above 1%. The agreement represents a major defeat for president Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Obama and Reid had tried to tie the funding for the government to the ongoing negotiations about payroll taxes, unemployment insurance, and the Keystone XL Pipeline in order to gain some advantage in those talks. This tactic rightly led to a revolt by Democrats who were aghast at threatening a government shutdown as part of the negotiations. Indeed, the agreement on the spending bill had been completed many days ago, but Reid and Obama had blocked voting on it in order to gain leverage. As a result, the country once again came to the edge of a shutdown, this time one that was completely unnecessary.

By yesterday evening, however, it was clear that there were Democrats in the House and Senate who were having no part of holding the country hostage in this way. In particular, Virginia representative Moran came forward, contradicted Reid and said that there had already been a complete agreement on all points in the spending bill. When these Democrats revealed the dishonesty of the Obama/Reid position, there was no choice but for them to cave in and allow the funding bill to move forward.