by David Safier Ever hear of David Yerushalmi, a lawyer based in Phoenix with offices in D.C.? I hadn't. But he's the guy who wrote the template for the anti-Sharia laws popping up in state legislatures all over the country. He works with Frank Gaffney, an Islamophobe who founded the Center for Security Policy. When … Read more

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

As regular readers know, I tend to agree with the opinions of Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly. His analyses are well-reasoned and well-written. So let's take a look at the question of what Friday night's "midnight hour" 2011 budget compromise really means for the future.

The first question is whether the 2011 budget compromise does anything to create jobs and to grow the economy. It does not. A Raw Deal:

There was arguably no way this budget fight was going to end well. In November, Americans elected the most conservative House majority in modern political history, and in December, Senate Republicans derailed an omnibus that would have funded the government through the end of the fiscal year.

Those two developments ensured a few things: (1) we'd see an ugly battle that could lead to a shutdown; (2) President Obama was going to have to compromise; and (3) the end result wouldn't be pretty.

* * *

Consider it this way: on Feb. 3, just nine weeks ago, the House Republican leadership unveiled their spending-cut plan, which would have cut $32 billion for the remainder of the fiscal year.

* * *

What's more, the $32 billion offered by the GOP leadership two months ago was their opening bid. They expected to compromise from there, and their plan included no policy riders at all.

It seems ridiculous now, but if Democrats had, on that very day, accepted the House Republican leadership's spending cuts right there on the spot, it would have been a better deal than the one we ended up with last night.

* * *

I realize Dems were left in an untenable position: allow a shutdown that would hurt the economy or accept spending cuts that would hurt the economy. Republicans, and the voters who mistakenly gave Republicans considerable power and influence, came up with the misguided agenda and relied on a hostage strategy that tends to work for them.

* * *

But I still can't defend the deal on the merits.

Ezra Klein offers this tale of the tape.

The final compromise was $38.5 billion below 2010's funding levels. That's $78.5 billion below President Obama's original budget proposal, which would've added $40 billion to 2010's funding levels, and $6.5 billion below John Boehner's original counteroffer, which would've subtracted $32 billion from 2010's budget totals. In the end, the real negotiation was not between the Republicans and the Democrats, or even the Republicans and the White House. It was between John Boehner and the conservative wing of his party. And once that became clear, it turned out that Boehner's original offer wasn't even in the middle. It was slightly center-left.

* * *

At a more fundamental level, the question that mattered most — with a weak economy and high unemployment, whose bright idea was it to scrap public investment and take billions out of the economy? — was never even asked. Because Dems flubbed the debate from the outset, the entire discussion ignored job creation, leading to a fight that boiled down to "a lot of cuts vs. a whole lot of cuts."

Keep in mind that what was agreed upon is a stop-gap continuing resolution (CR) to later in the week, when another vote on the actual 2011 budget compromise must be voted upon.

Posted by Craig McDermott, cross-posted from Random Musings In a development this past week that is both "review" and "preview," Senate President Russell Pearce threatened/promised to bring back some of his anti-immigrant measures that failed to pass earlier in the session. From a Howard Fischer-written story, courtesy the East Valley Tribune – Unwilling to accept defeat, … Read more

Posted by Michael Bryan What the GOP is willing to shut the government down over is actually merely a symbolic amount of spending. The problem lies not in the cuts themselves (other than the distribution of the pain they will cause is unjustly slanted toward those who can least absorb the blow), but the policy … Read more

Posted by AzBlueMeanie: It's not enough that the Tea-Publican legislature cut $183 million from the K-12 school budget that will invariably lead to school closures and teacher layoffs, but those teachers "lucky" enough to still have a job next school year will be paying a 3% "surtax" on their wages — not a pension contribution … Read more

Posted by AzBlueMeanie: RSVP via ActBlue by clicking HERE