The White House and Congress have come to a budget agreement but the GOP is criticizing it as capitulation to the Democrats.
The deal, which will add about $80 billion to the budget, split equally between defense and domestic spending, is expected to add about 500,000 jobs by 2017 according to a White House release. This will also mark the last time President Obama will have to hammer out a budget agreement with the increasingly right-wing GOP.
Despite including reforms to Social Security and Medicare, many within the Republican Party are angry with Boehner for making compromises on raising the debt ceiling by $112 billion.
Congressman John Fleming (R-LA) told reporters
“I’m skeptical. This president has never shown any interest in reforming entitlements”
Paul Ryan has also taken a stance against this deal for its closed-door compromises without consulting members, saying:
“About the process I can say this: I think the process stinks. This is not the way to do the people’s business, and under new management, we are not going to do the people’s business this way,”
Ryan is up for election as speaker tomorrow and may be trying to appeal to the hard right so-called “Freedom Caucus” who were livid about compromises being made, especially without their support.
Freedom Caucus member Justin Amash took to Twitter to express his anger over the deal:
When battling an $18.5 trillion debt, it's not a compromise to say everyone gets to spend more; it's irresponsible avoidance of compromise.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) October 27, 2015
This deal however isn’t going to cost very much more. Savings made by reforming Social Security and Medicare as well as revenue from the selling of oil in the Strategic Oil Reserve and selling part of the government-owned broadcast spectrum will offset the increases in spending.
A common Republican attack has been to claim that Obama refuses to negotiate with the GOP, although Obama has been cooperative. The far-right Freedom Caucus is worse, opposing any compromise with democrats on almost any ground. This same mentality gave us the government shutdown in 2013 and the Freedom Caucus has threatened a new shutdown at every new budget deal.
The greatest benefit this deal may have is that it will take away the fiscal brinkmanship that Republicans have been playing with. Raising the debt ceiling will take away the constant threat of a government shutdown, at least for two years. Even John McCain will likely support the deal, saying:
“I think that we could move forward with this, it averts a shutdown, it puts any of these problems into two years from now, so I think it’s the best deal we can get.”
Hopefully this budget agreement will marginalize the Freedom Caucus and moderate the Republican Party to a degree and help force Congress into actually governing.
Featured image via Flickr by Gage Skidmore under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.
