April 13, 2011 Well, they blinked again.

Republicans are fond of accusing Democrats of weakness, usually meaning that they are reluctant to send others off to war, or to put people in prison forever for minor crimes, or that they otherwise exercise mature judgment. However, the recent performance of Congressional Democrats and the President validates the libel, albeit with a change of subject. Capitulation to the Republican terms for avoiding a government shutdown was weakness with a vengeance, so to speak.

The President already had adopted a Hooverish counter-stimulus posture, but that was not enough for the GOP, which suddenly is aware of, and aghast at, the deficit and the national debt. The Party formerly governed by Cheney’s complacent formula — “Reagan proved deficits don't matter” — now finds them to be a threat to Life as We Know It.

John Boehner forced on Mr. Obama and on the equally compliant Harry Reid an absurd new Continuing Resolution: absurd in its general outline, and absurd in that it was only an outline, to be filled in over the next few days by Congressional staff. The following is, more or less, what emerged from the staff rooms, taken from a report of the House Appropriations Committee.

The claimed cuts are reductions from the FY 2010 budget, organized more or less by executive department:

•$3 billion from Agriculture, including $10 million from food safety inspection. The report states that the Resolution “includes $6.75 billion for the Special Supplemental Feeding Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC),” but doesn’t mention that it cuts the program by $504 million.

•$10.9 billion from Commerce, Justice and “Science.” However, much of the “cut” reflects the ending of the census, which accounted for $6.2 billion* in FY 2010, and $1.885 billion* in unspecified “rescissions.” This section also prohibits funding for the establishment of a Climate Service at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

•$1.7 billion from “Energy and Water.” The report adds, “These significant cuts further the House Republican commitment to deficit reduction and reining in the size of government...”

•$2.4 billion from “Financial Services and General Government,” including the Treasury Department. This includes a cut of more than $800 million from funding for construction of new federal buildings. The plan would make no change to funding for drug task forces and programs to assist small businesses but, according to a Washington Post article, would block a funding increase, sought by the administration, for the Internal Revenue Service to hire additional agents. There is an increase of $13 million for the Inspector General of the Troubled Asset Relief Program and $74 million for the Securities and Exchange Commission, so the White House apparently won a few minor skirmishes.

•$784 million from Homeland Security. The arithmetic in this one is impossible to follow, but the net departmental cut equals the cut in “FEMA first responder grants”.

•$2.62 billion from Interior, of which $1.6 billion is cut from the Environmental Protection Agency, $49 million from climate change funding and about $13 million each* from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. As the report concedes, or boasts, 61% of Interior’s cuts are at the expense of the despised EPA.

•$5.5 billion from Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and related Agencies. The resolution “terminates funding for more than 55 programs, for a total savings of well over $1 billion,” and “cuts two programs funded in ObamaCare . . . “

•$103 million from the Legislative Branch. This seems like a worthy saving, but may merely facilitate cramming legislation through without adequate review.

•$504 million from State and “Foreign Operations.” This is made up of a $377 million cut to U.S. contributions to the United Nations and international organizations, a $130 million cut to international banks and financial institutions and $73 million from family planning activities, which add up, however, to $580 million. It also “maintains pro-life policy provisions carried in fiscal year 2010,” and includes a prohibition on pay raises for foreign service officers.

•$12.3 billion from Transportation, Housing, Urban Development and related Agencies. The bill “eliminates new funding for High Speed Rail and rescinds $400 million in previous year funds, for a total reduction of $2.9 billion from fiscal year 2010 levels.” It also reduces funding for transit by a total of $991 million and includes “contract authority rescissions of $3.2 billion” for highways.

The committee report touts its accomplishments with little restraint: the legislation ”will prevent a government shutdown, fund the entire federal government until September 30, 2011, and provide essential funding for national defense.” It “will cut an unparalleled nearly $40 billion in federal spending.” The effect of the bill will be “the largest non-defense spending cut in the history of our nation . . .” It will “continu[e] the trend of budget reductions to dig our nation out of our dangerous deficits and debt for years to come.”

The non-defense qualification was a necessary concession. The negative numbers listed above add up to 39.81 billion, and there is in addition a proposed .2% across-the-board cut to non-defense spending, bringing the total to 39.89 billion, or “nearly forty.” However, two paragraphs later the report concedes that this includes 12 billion already agreed to in earlier resolutions, so the cuts in this deal are about 28 billion.

Even that requires ignoring defense spending, which will increase by these amounts:

• $5 billion to the Defense Department. “The bill also includes an additional $157.8 billion for overseas contingency operations (emergency funding) to advance our missions abroad.” It isn’t clear whether that is included in the 5 billion.

• $600 million to Military Construction/Veterans Affairs. Therefore all of the bragging is about saving $22.29 billion (39.89-12-5.6), about .63% of the benchmark 2010 budget, or .59% of the administration’s proposed FY 2011 budget.

The Washington Post article commented that some of the supposed cuts are fiscal gimmicks. The plan eliminates funding for four Obama administration “czars,” but those positions are vacant. A cut of $3.5 billion for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, would affect only “states that make an extra effort to enroll children. But officials with knowledge of the budget deal said that most states were unlikely to qualify for the bonuses and that sufficient money would be available for those that did.” There is a cut of $4.9 billion from the Justice Department’s Crime Victims Fund, “but that money is in a reserve fund that wasn’t going to be spent this year.”

The deal also sets the future legislative agenda to some extent. It requires that the Senate debate and vote on repealing the health care law and on ending federal funding to Planned Parenthood.

The ideological slant is obvious, including cuts to anything which might be considered stimulus spending, such as construction. The ideological focus leads to matters having nothing to with the budget, such as a provision preventing Guantanamo Bay detainees from being transferred into the United States for any purpose, and a prohibition on the use of any funds, federal or otherwise, to pay for abortions in the District of Columbia. As Rep. Ryan said of his similarly focused plan, “This is not a budget. This is a cause.”

* These figures are from a detailed listing of cuts which accompanied the committee report.

29.Suskind, The Price of Loyalty, p. 291

30. http://republicans.appropriations.house.gov/_files/41211SummaryFinalFY2011CR.pdf . Except as otherwise noted, the numbers are from that report.

31. http://www.washingtonpost.com/todays_paper/A%20Section/2011-04-12 /A/10/18.0.2370818597_epaper.html

32. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/video/rep-paul-ryan-budget-13300209