As Good As It Gets

   When I heard that Representative Paul Ryan and Senator Patty Murray had managed to hammer out a federal budget framework for the next two years, I felt like stepping out on the balcony and announcing, "Habemus placitum!"  ("We have an agreement!")  Except I don't have a balcony and nothing in the budget agreement is really anything to get excited about in itself.  Even if I had a balcony, I'd probably only see a few startled students look up as they hustled to take their final exams this week.


   It's perhaps a good sign that nobody in Congress is happy about the Ryan-Murray budget agreement.  Conservatives are grumbling that it doesn't do enough to reduce spending immediately, and liberals are bemoaning the fact that there isn't more spending.  This is nothing new.  The two parties view the question of the federal budget from different ideological stances; there would be something extremely suspect about anyone in Congress being able to say, "I'm perfectly satisfied with this budget and I get everything I want."  Looking at the framework, I would say it's a grown-up compromise.  There are no big wins or big losses in the bill.

   The budget agreement as a framework for the actual budget to be written, if all passes, will do something very important, and I hope the Tea Party enthusiasts will take note:  at long last, after years of continuing resolutions that pretty much let the executive branch spend at will, the budget decisions will return where they constitutionally ought to be, in the Congress.  That is something to shout about.  The Ryan-Murray plan is the first crucial step back toward fiscal sanity and the federal budget working the way it's supposed to.  That's nothing to sneeze at in Washington these days.

   I greatly sympathize with Tea Party aims, but we also need to be realistic.  I liked Paul Ryan's budget in 2011, and I liked his budget in 2012.  They were fiscally conservative and sensible.  But they went nowhere in a Democratically controlled Senate.  If we want to avoid the specter of periodic shutdowns and budget battles that end in continuing resolutions, Congress needs to accept the fact of divided government and compromise so as to fulfill its responsibilities to the American people.  Going over the cliff with ideological flags flying is just plain stupid.  If fiscal conservatives want to see a fiscally conservative budget, they will first have to demonstrate that they can govern responsibly and without tantrums.  That's how you give people the assurance to vote for you, and that's how you get a future budget that achieves more of your aims.  With the Affordable Care Act casting Mordor-like clouds of doom over Democrats in the mid-term elections next year, don't give voters a reason to think that Republicans would be just as incapable of governing sensibly if they had the majority.

   I hope the Ryan-Murray plan passes the Senate, as it has with enormous support in the House.  It's not perfect, it is playing small ball.  But it will give us the first proper federal budget we've had in years, and returns to Congress the constitutional responsibility it ought to be fulfilling.  It may be as good as it gets for now, but I'll settle for that over a government in perpetual crisis.