Then conservative groups attacked the bipartisan budget agreement between Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., which the full Congress just passed. It cuts benefits for veterans and raises fees related to air travel. And Boehner lost his patience with the more conservative wing.

Boehner lashed out at the groups over the course of two days. Boehner said he thought outside conservative groups “have lost all credibility” and that he does not care what they do.

He later explained his outburst against the groups, saying, “Yesterday, when the criticism was coming, frankly I thought it was my job and my obligation to stand up for conservatives here in the Congress who want more deficit reduction, to stand up for the work that Chairman Ryan did.”

Boehner’s outburst wasn’t impotent. Despite opposition from outside conservative groups, the two-year budget deal passed the House 332 to 94. A majority of the Republican conference voted yes. It was a significant test of Boehner’s resolve against the more ideologically pure elements of his party. But the bet paid off.

Control

No political win, however, exists in a vacuum.  Liberal activists — and even conservative moderates — immediately begin to suggest that Boehner’s move against the conservative elements of his party was the preface to Boehner reasserting establishment control over the legislative agenda.  Many have predicted that Boehner’s move was a signal that he was now willing to move immigration reform.

A California-based immigration reform activist, who spoke to CalWatchdog.com on the condition of anonymity to be more candid, said that Boehner’s recent behavior was “heart-warming” and seemed “honest.”

The activist, who has been involved in lobbying California Congressmen to push for reform, added, “It makes you think, ‘OK, maybe [Boehner will] play ball.’”

But he cautioned that, while activists are optimistic, they’re not blindly so. He expects that major immigration reform won’t be able to pass until 2015, at the earliest. It’s difficult to pass major legislation in an election year, he explained, and it makes more strategic sense (from the Republican point of view) to wait.

Republicans, who are at a politically advantageous position because of the trouble associated with the rollout of Obamacare, reasonably expect to pick up seats in the midterms. They could feasibly control the Senate — though that will be no easy task — by January 2015. So why would they pass immigration reform when they’re almost certain to pick up seats and enter a stronger bargaining position? The answer is simple: They wouldn’t.

So, yes, Speaker Boehner has changed his tune. But that doesn’t mean he’ll change his strategy just yet.

Sequester We Hardly Knew Ye

The great irony of the Republican decision to bust the budget sequester is that barely two months ago, congressional roles were reversed.  The Democrats insisted on funding the government according to existing law.  The Republicans sought one simple change: that the individual insurance mandate under Obamacare be delayed for one year.  They were trying to spare the American people the Obamacare disaster that is now unfolding, but to no avail.  The American people sided overwhelmingly with the Democrats on the principle that the government should be funded according to current law without any side issues.

Why wasn’t that principle applied just two months later? Republicans were in the ideal position to hold the budget line simply by insisting on enforcing current law.  Instead, the House Republican leadership pushed through a two-year budget that will allow the federal government to spend an additional $63 billion more than current law allows – money that our country does not have.

Some of the discussion has focused on how much of the spending spree will be paid with higher taxes.  The answer is, “all of it.”  Once government spends a dollar, it has already decided to tax that dollar – the only questions that remain are who gets the bill and when.

Sixty-three billion dollars of new spending – and therefore new taxes in some form – is not a small amount of money.  It averages about $570 of added burdens for every family in America.

Not so, say supporters.  Over the next ten years, fee increases and spending reforms will pay for all of this, with $22 billion to spare for debt reduction.  The claim is a practical application of the economic principles of J. Wellington Wimpy:  “I will gladly pay you $22 billion in deficit reduction ten years from now for $63 billion in new spending today.”

The lie is given to this promise within the measure itself.  A major part of the alleged long-term deficit reduction is the assurance that after a two year spending binge, Congress will not only enforce the sequester but will even extend it for an extra two years in 2022 and 2023.  Pardon my skepticism.  We are required to believe that in the future, Congress will magically summon the fiscal discipline that has eluded it in the present.

A side deal called the “Doc Fix” offers more reason for doubt.  The “Doc Fix” has become an annual ritual arising from a previous budget deal that promised long term savings, except that Congress votes every year to ignore it (oops there goes another $8.7 billion).

True, discretionary spending will be less than the House budgets of 2011 and 2012, but this is a sleight-of-hand. Those budgets were unified packages of reforms that saved most on the mandatory side of the ledger and must be viewed in their totality -– not picking and choosing which parts to compare and which to ignore.

Finally, we are told that there are not enough votes in the House to support current-law spending.  There’s one way to find out: put a clean measure on the floor and see where the votes are.  That’s essentially how the impasse was resolved two months ago.

The sequester provided less than a third of the deficit reduction that Standard and Poors warned would have been necessary to maintain our triple-A credit rating, which is why many conservatives opposed it.  But it was at least a step in the right direction. It was an agreement that Congress made with itself, and given the political realities of a divided government, it became the only viable instrument to keep spending under some modicum of control. The busting of that limit now calls into question any promises of future fiscal restraint.

Perhaps the most stinging indictment of the budget deal comes from former Reagan budget director David Stockman. Under Stockman’s guidance, the Reagan administration reduced both spending and the deficit as a percentage of GDP, produced a period of prolonged economic expansion and won the cold war.   His verdict is chilling: “It’s a joke and betrayal. It’s the final surrender of the House Republican leadership to Beltway politics and kicking the can and ignoring the budget monster that’s hurtling down the road.”

The new Congressional budget is a mistake at a time when we can’t afford many more mistakes.  The path of least resistance, even if paved with good intentions, is not a path America can afford to travel any longer.

McClintock is a better writer than a heck of a lot of journalists. How do I know he wrote this himself? I hosted a talk-radio show for two years. He was one of the very few people I ever interviewed (Victor Davis Hanson was another) whose responses were always like cogent mini-essays. Thesis. Supporting evidence. Factual poke at opponent’s counterargument. Restate thesis.

He writes like he talks.

But Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., just cooked up a budget deal that begs the question: Why Republicans? Here are the specifics on the budget “cuts”:

“Mr. Ryan, at a joint news conference with Sen. Patty Murray, Washington Democrat, said the spending plan calls for reducing the deficit by $23 billion over 10 years without raising taxes.”

That’s a reduction of $2.3 billion a year, assuming a future Congress doesn’t reverse it. Which is out of a federal budget estimated to spend $3.8 trillion. So the “cuts” are less than 1 percent. Not increasing taxes is fine. But a future Congress could reverse that, and increase taxes.

More:

“The Wisconsin Republican, the House’s chief budget writer, said the deal would reverse about $65 billion in previously agreed-upon automatic spending cuts to the military and other government programs.“

So, spending also will rise by $6.5 billion a year. Of course, in Congress Math, an automatic rise is not a rise, only reversing a “cut.”

But if we use regular math and subtract the $2.3 billion in apparent cuts from the $6.5 billion in increases, we get $4.1 billion in increases every year.

President Obama praised the Ryan-Murray proposal:

“Earlier this year, I called on Congress to work together on a balanced approach to a budget that grows our economy faster and creates more jobs — not through aimless, reckless spending cuts that harm our economy now, but by making sure we can afford to invest in the things that have always grown our economy and strengthened our middle class. Today’s bipartisan budget agreement is a good first step.”

Is he serious about “aimless, reckless spending cuts”? Too bad he didn’t spend any time in the military — I spent four years in the U.S. Army — he would have seen waste beyond his wildest dreams. Shaving a couple billion of Pentagon bloat wouldn’t damage defending the country at all, and actually would improve it by helping put the country on a sounder financial footing.

In the background of this debate remains the nagging of Prof. Laurence Kotlikoff of Boston University, who tallies the federal government’s unfunded liabilities — for Social Security, Medicare, federal pensions, military pension and medical care, etc. — at $222 trillion.

Paul Ryan, of course, is running for president. Although it’s hard to see how the Tea Party favorite will maintain that position by crafting a budget deal attractive to the president that Ryan, as a vice presidential candidate last year, opposed.

For Republican voters, it’s another case of their leaders selling them out.

Why Republicans?

By Chris Reed

As I wrote last week, the budget that Senate Democrats have embraced contains so little discretionary funding for California’s bullet-train project that it is impossible to see how the $68 billion project ever gets done.

But here’s an interesting twist. The primary author of the budget — Senate Budget Chairwoman Patty Murray, D-Wash. — is so down on the Obama administration’s bullet train initiative that she tried to kill it in 2011. This is from a Sept. 21, 2011, AP story:

“WASHINGTON (AP) — The Democratic-led Senate Appropriations Committee has voted to provide $100 million to build high-speed rail lines, a small portion of what President Barack Obama has proposed for one of his economic priorities.

“The panel voted by voice Wednesday to include the money in a $110 billion transportation and housing bill for next year.

“Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the bill’s author, included nothing for high-speed rail in the original measure, citing budget constraints.

“But senators backed an amendment by No. 2 Senate Democratic leader Richard Durbin of Illinois adding the money. He said it would be paid for with unspent money from past home district projects called earmarks.’

The Vegas-to-Victorville bullet train. Yes, I said Victorville.

That’s the good news. Here’s the bad news: There’s another costly bullet-train program still alive that we don’t hear much about — and its advocates are still somewhat cocky that billions of dollars in now-available federal funds will be wasted on it. It is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s farcical plan to link Las Vegas with, yes, Victorville with a high-speed rail project dependent on federal dollars.

For those who don’t know their Socal geography, Victorville is 85 miles from Los Angeles — 85 congested miles on Interstates 15 and 10. This is only slightly less crazy than the California bullet train’s first segment being built in farm country in the Central Valley.