Budget Deal Reached By Boehner Not As Bad As It Was Cracked Up To Be

John Boehner, on the defensive, made his case on the Laura Ingraham Show, this morning, saying the budget deal was a good first step, and he repeated his assertion that he fought for every spending cut he could get from Reid and Obama:

The AP report yesterday that claimed the deal reached between John Boehner and Barack Obama would only save $352 million off the FY2010 spending plan had some conservative heads spinning, yesterday, including mine.

But apparently, that’s not at all alarming or unusual considering how slow adjustments to the budget take hold.

The WaPo With Bloomberg Business reports:

At issue is a concept in budgeting that is often difficult to grasp. Appropriations bills like the pending measure give agencies the authority to spend taxpayers’ money. But such authority typically takes months or years to actually leave the federal Treasury, so cuts made in the middle of the budget year often have little immediate impact.

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The CBO study confirms that the measure trims $38 billion in new spending authority relative to current levels, but many of the cuts come in slow-spending accounts like water-and-sewer grants that don’t have an immediate deficit impact.

Like Ace, I won’t even pretend to know how these things work. I tend to rely on other wonkier types to help me form my opinion on Washington’s budget numbers.  But I was one of the last bloggers to jump on the WTF bandwagon because I just wasn’t predisposed to distrust our guys to that extent.

We knew that the spending cuts were just a drop in the bucket considering how massive the debt is, but $352 million didn’t even seem like a serious attempt to set the ship right.

My instincts were to believe Boehner when he said he fought hard for all the cuts he could get. That’s why I was so nonplussed to hear reports that we were being scammed, (which you can see from my thoughts in the comment section, here). I happen to believe that Boehner’s an honorable man — he’s  one of the good guys.

I’m still bothered by the fact that we didn’t start from a bargaining point of $100 billion like they promised us in 2010, and I wish he hadn’t taken shutting down the government off the table, but now I’m back to my Friday night position — I think he did a decent job, considering who he was negotiating with.

Previously:

Audio: Hannity Interviews John Boehner: “I Fought Like A Dog Until 10:00 Friday Night”(UPDATED)

Budget Agreement Not What It Was Cracked Up To Be – Rand Paul May Wage Filibuster

Congress Strikes Deal, Shutdown Averted (Updated)