 The Stink Of WashingtonWhile the Senate is still wrapping up business today in Washington, the key vote on the bipartisan budget mess that is the two-year Ryan/Murray deal happened on Tuesday. Sixty-seven Senators voted to advance the measure to its final vote - more than two-thirds of the Senate - meaning the bill is highly likely to pass.
As we wrote and cartooned about last week, and as both Rep Ryan and Sen. Murray have confirmed, the budget bill is legislation that both sides are unhappy with. Even so, like the skunk at the garden party, both Republicans and Democrats will hold up this budget bill next year as a success they captured together.
Truthfully, Republicans got the upper hand - and their desperation to find something in the bill that they dislike proves it.
As Dana Milbank pointed out in the Washington Post, Republicans on Capitol Hill have really been in a bind about the budget bill, having to dig down to a relatively minor percentage-point reduction in the cost of living for military veterans to find something to complain about. Of course, if the Republicans in Congress had been willing to actually find or generate the revenue necessary to tackle that issue seriously, that cost to retired veterans wouldn't have been an issue. Of course, such agreement also wouldn't have allowed Republicans in Congress to posture while they attempt to take the nation hostage again in early 2014.
Still, our Federal government has a budget, for the first time in years, a feat that nominally shows Congress actually works - though as both Greg Sargent and Katrina vanden Heuvel pointed out on Tuesday, that's an incredibly low bar that truly deserves no applause...
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