Budget Charade: How Republicans Forfeited Our Future

Hand-wringing Republicans, skittish about the media thrashing over the government shutdown, have surrendered America's future to spendthrift Democrats.  The recent capitulation by the House majority resulted in a two-year budget deal that leaves unaddressed the nation's fiscal problems.

In the name of the political Holy Grail of bipartisanship, the jelly-spined GOP agreed to eliminate $45 billion of scheduled sequester budget cuts next year and another $18 billion in 2015, wiping out the first meaningful reductions in spending since President Obama took office.

As a result of the deal, the nation continues on a fiscal collision course that will leave the United States with nothing but Draconian choices in the near future.  

The agreement, forged by Republican Rep. Paul Ryan and Democrat Sen. Patty Murray, still must be approved by the totalitarian Senate, ruled by iron-fisted dictator Harry Reid.  However, prospects appear good that the bargain will slither through the upper chamber.

Fearful Republicans succumbed to the House accord after the 16-day government shutdown in October triggered a media savaging of the party brand.  Against this fusillade of criticism,  GOP party insiders lobbied for appeasement to shore up Republicans' chances in next year's mid-term elections.

But the bipartisan compact does not address reforms needed in the nation's bloated entitlement programs, which account for 62 percent of spending.  Unless Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare and welfare programs are pared, prudent deficit and debt reduction cannot be achieved.  Period.

In their haste to make concessions, cowardly House Republicans waved the white flag over spending.  Under the deal, discretionary expenditures would climb to $1.012 trillion in 2014 and $1.014 trillion the following year.  There is no reduction in spending, despite what the media has reported.

As a result, deficits will continue to add to the nation's swollen debt. This month U.S. debt crossed over the $17 trillion mark for the first time in history.  Unfunded liabilities, money owed to Social Security and other programs, now stands at $126.9 trillion and mounting daily.

As part of the covenant, the two parties "propose" to save $85 billion and reduce the deficit by more than $20 billion.  There are no details on how these future cutbacks will be accomplished.  This is nothing more than a Washington gimmick designed to defer decisions indefinitely.

Weak-kneed Republicans also reneged on their promise to enact no new taxes.  They signed on to a sneaky increase in millions of dollars in user fees on air travel and customs.  Only in Washington would the establishment refuse to call these tax increases.

Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, architects of a nonpartisan report in 2010 on the nation's fiscal threats, were critical of the agreement's provisions because of the missed opportunity to address entitlement reform and to amend the tax code.

"That leaves only tough choices for future deficit reduction or sequester replacement, which are critically necessary to keep entitlement programs affordable and the economy vibrant," the two policy makers wrote in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times.

Reaching middle ground on issues often requires trade-offs.  But Republicans caved into Democrats for the tawdry allure of victory at the polls in November.  In exchange, they received a one-day pass from the media but lost the trust of many GOP voters they will need next year.