The Mother Jones (3 SD to the left of The Nation) View of this mess

Kevin Drum:

As several people have pointed out to me, my headline this morning ("The Republican Defeat in the Budget Deal Was Complete and Total") is satisfying but not entirely true. After all, Republicans did get a continuing resolution that funds the government at sequester levels. Democrats agreed to that long ago.

But I’ve never really thought of that as a Republican victory, because I never really thought there was any chance at all of rolling back the sequester.

Interesting. Mother Jones thinks that democrats were interested in controlling the deficits and debt. My view is that they were driven like wild animals to that position.

Here are the money lines:

It’s possible that there’s some kind of minor deal to be made before the CR extension runs out in January. But for the moment, I think the sequester is locked into place.

Republicans have never been serious about “entitlement reform,”

and even if they were, there’s no way that anything significant could be negotiated within a few weeks.

Without that, there’s just no bargain to be had except, possibly, at the margins. Unfortunately for Democrats, the sequester is settled law just as much as Obamacare is. And we all know the lesson Republicans learned from fighting Obamacare, don’t we?

UPDATE: I’m getting some feedback that suggests the Obama White House, in fact, really, really hates the sequester because it hammers discretionary spending so badly. So I might have gone too far in my fifth bullet above. However, I still think the sequester is here to stay, and I doubt that Obama is going to try to fight too hard against it.

It’s somehow gratifying and past infuriating to see Obama taking credit for the dropping deficit, which has occurred for 1 and only 1 reason, and then, read he ‘hates the sequester because it hammers discretionary spending’.

DUDES, the number 1 line item on the budget is SS spending.

$773 billion in 2012. UNAFFECTED.

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Social Security Spending 2012 = $773 billion going up

Defense dept budget 2012 = $672 billion GOING DOWN by sequester ($525 base this year)

Medicare = $330 billion going UP

National debt = $17,000 billion going up, $21,000 billion in just a FEW YEARS

Interest on the national debt 2012 = $220 billion going UP, driven by Medicare, SS and Obamacare, as you can see at $21,000 billion of debt,  this will begin exceeding the ENTIRE Medicare budget

SNAP spending = $80.4 billion going up

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The only spending which can be AFFECTED in that list is defense, and SNAP. SNAP is Obama voting.

The democrats are NOT INTERESTED in the debt, as the latest article in New Republic demonstrated.