Late Friday night, Democrats and Republicans reached an 11th hour compromised budget agreement to keep the government up and running, which averted an extremely unpopular shut down. So now, who looks like the winner?
President Obama and the Democrats went up against House Speaker John Boehner and the Republicans to stave off a federal shutdown that neither side was willing to risk politically. They reached a compromise that will bleed about $40 billion from the day-to-day budgets of domestic agencies over the next 6 months — the biggest rollback of such government programs in history.
Speaker Boehner will claim his GOP troops forced Cabinet department operating budgets back on track and forced the White House to meet the GOP more than halfway on spending. But a strong-willed President Obama will boast he succeeded in forcing Republicans to cave in on dozens of controversial conservative policies, including preventing the roll back of environmental protections or cutting off Planned Parenthood from taxpayer assistance while protecting favored programs like education, clean energy and medical research.
Who won?
Well. IMO, this appears to be less a victory for either side and more like a truce…and a 5 month truce at that. Let's face it..it took them months to cut just a small piece of the overall budget and those very same issues will be back on the table in September when Congress is expected to pass budget for next year. IOW: The worst (in tems of fighting) is yet to come.But if the President is smart and continues to govern in a serious manner, he'll present his own long-term plan for reducing the deficit by taking.." *a scalpel, not a machete,* to programs like Medicare and education services and try once again to extract more taxes from the wealthiest Americans."It will be the Obama Plan versus the Ryan Plan. Let's just say there are already some MAJOR problems with the Ryan Plan.