THE GOP CONGRESSIONAL CAVE-IN IS COMPLETE — PART ONE

A horrible bargain is reached by a craven and venal bunch of Republican “Leaders”  —  who would rather blame the Senator Ted Cruz and the Tea Party,  than to dig-in and fight-off Obama, Reid and the Democrats

In addition to all the things that the GOP maneuvering didn't get like defunding, or other limitations and restrictions on Obamacare, as part of the GOP "Government shut-down" and "Debt ceiling" fiasco  —  The Interim Budget Deal blows up “mandated” sequester spending caps, adding almost Twenty Billion Dollars ( $20,000,000,000 ) of red ink between now and the next C.R.  and/or debt ceiling deal(s)  —  Try getting that back in the rounds of “talks” that are also part of the deal 

According to the Daily Caller, “Announcing the budget deal he reached with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Kentucky Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell said on Wednesday he was thankful Republicans were at least able to keep in place the automatic spending cuts that went into effect across government agencies earlier this year. ***  “That’s been a top priority for me and my Republican colleagues throughout this debate,” the Senate Minority Leader said on the floor of the Senate, referencing what’s known as the sequester. “And it’s been worth the effort.” ***  But while the deal freezes in place current spending numbers, the budget deal actually blows through the sequester spending caps that were supposed to go into effect on Oct. 1 — by nearly $20 billion....” ( See “Budget deal BLOWS THROUGH the mandated sequester spending caps” by Alex Pappas, 10/16/13, Daily Caller [http://dailycaller.com/2013/10/16/budget-deal-blows-through-the-mandated-sequester-spending-caps/]).

The Budget Control Act of 2011 mandated automatic spending cuts across the government, requiring a discretionary budget in fiscal year 2013 of $986 billion. On October 1, 2013 sequester cuts were supposed to rein-in the discretionary budget to $967 billion for fiscal year 2014. However,  the spending cap in the just passed McConnell-Reid deal for the next three months is frozen temporarily at $986 billion   —   that is more than  $19 billion higher  than the government was  supposed to be able to spend in fiscal year 2014.

People like Senator Mitch McConnell ( R- Ky) don’t even flinch when they lie to us. When they get caught in the lie, McConnell and his defenders quickly point out that this deal stopped Democrats from killing these automatic spending cuts completely. Without the GOP opposition, President Barack Obama and Harry Reid would have ignored the sequester limits and increased the interim budget to $1.058 trillion.