Epic Fail: John Boehner's $14.7B capitulation

Question: When is $100B in budget cuts actually less than $15B?

Answer: When a feckless House leadership gets played like a cheap accordion.

Remember that $100 billion in 2011 spending cuts the Republican minority promised to enact last October if they were able to regain control of the House?

During the recent midterm elections campaign, Republican leaders pledged to reduce non-entitlement spending by a whopping $100 billion.

“The Republican leadership has committed to this $100 billion cut,” says Brian Riedl, lead budget analyst for the Heritage Foundation. “I expect them to do everything in their power to enact it. They’re on the record, they ran on this, and if it’s brushed aside there would be harsh political consequences.”

There should be. Because, as it turns out, the "harsh, draconian" cuts that Speaker John Boehner negotiated last Friday weren't $100 billion or even the $38 billion figure that the Beltway insiders gleefully advertised.

The full extent of the budget deal reached late Friday did not become clear until today "after congressional aides worked all weekend and all day Monday to shape a detailed spending plan based on the framework that Obama and congressional leaders agreed to Friday," the Washington Post reports... "In several cases, what look like large reductions are actually accounting gimmicks."

National Journal: "The specifics show that finding nearly $40 billion in cuts during the 2011 fiscal year required clever accounting and, for the White House, a willingness to concede on rhetoric to find gains on substance. For example, the final cuts in the deal are advertised as $38.5 billion less than was appropriated in 2010, but after removing rescissions, cuts to reserve funds and reductions in mandatory spending programs, discretionary spending will be reduced only by $14.7 billion."

Let's recap.

Over the last two years, the Republicans -- Boehner and Cantor especially -- were treated like dirt by the Democrats. They were locked out of important policy debates, they were refused the opportunity to introduce amendments, and they had brutal bills like Cap-and-Trade and Obamacare slammed down their throats.

Furthermore, President Obama and the Democrats have set this country on a course for fiscal ruin.

The time for negotiation is long since past, yet the cowardly RINO leaders insist on "working with President Obama".

In the most recent case, Boehner held a nuclear weapon: a partial government shutdown. It was a weapon that has been used at least a dozen times in the recent past. Yet, right up front, Boehner told anyone who would listen that he would never shut down the government. Which meant he had no power in his "negotiations" with the radical Leftists who now control the Democrat Party.

And he got played.

$15 billion in cuts when $100 billion was promised? When the country is headed for a complete economic catastrophe?

We need a new Speaker of the House. Someone who will live up to their word. Someone like Michele Bachmann or Allen West.


Update: Budget deal includes cut of $226 million border fence at suggestion of Obama administration

Update II: A Scam of a Budget Deal.


Linked by: Michelle Malkin. Thanks!