The Bipartisan Budget Deal?

(National Review) The conventional wisdom among Washington Republicans is that populist conservative voters no longer care about spending or deficits. President Trump and congressional leaders are nearing a deal that would raise the discretionary-spending caps by $320 billion over two years and offset less than one-quarter of those costs (and even those offsets would take a decade to materialize). The budget deal would essentially repeal the final two years of the 2011 Budget Control Act and raise the baseline for future discretionary spending by nearly $2 trillion over the decade. This represents a fitting conclusion of the Budget Control Act the crown jewel of the 2011 tea-party Congress." The decade-long shredding of these hard-fought budget constraints mirrors the shredding of Republican credibility on fiscal responsibility. The story begins a decade ago when a budget deficit that had declined to a modest $161 billion by 2007 was hit with the Great Recession. While recessions always automatically raise budget deficits (fewer tax revenues more unemployment and welfare costs) President Bush President Obama and both parties in Congress deepened the red ink with the TARP bailouts which were initially expected to cost $700 billion as well as with President Obamas nearly $1 trillion stimulus law which failed to rescue the economy even by the White Houses own metrics. By 2009 the deficit had exceeded $1 trillion for the first time reaching $1.4 trillion. Horrified by Washington spenders CNBCs Rick Santelli stood on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange on February 19 2009 and called for a tea party" to end the bailouts stimulus payments and red ink. Grassroots tea-party groups formed further enraged by the later enactment of an expensive new Obamacare entitlement and helped Republicans capture the House in 2010 with a stunning 63-seat pickup and also pick up seven Senate seats.