The deal Congressional Republicans made with Democrats last week to cut the federal budget and avoid a government shutdown is the scam of the decade.

Mainstream media, conservative commentators, and Republican politicians call it a grand victory for the GOP, showing as it does Speaker of the House John Boehner’s suave negotiating skills, the GOP’s ability to nudge Democrats from their opening position, and Republicans’ luck in getting $6 billion more in cuts than Boehner had asked for.

FOX News’ Carl Cameron crowed, “Who Won the Shutdown Showdown?  It Wasn’t Even Close…  Democrats claimed they met Republicans halfway after the $10 billion in cuts that already passed this year were approved.  They settled late Friday night at three and a half times more.  Boehner came in $8.5 billion higher than the halfway point between his high offer of $61 billion in cuts and the Democrats opening bid of zero cuts.”

All of these numbers are meaningless, constituting as they do microscopic slivers of the federal deficit.

To put the cuts in perspective, CNS News reported that the federal debt jumped $54 billion in the eight days before Congress approved the $38.5 billion in cuts.  The cuts leave the 2011 budget $773 billion greater than the 2008 budget, higher by about the same amount as the Democrats’ 2009 stimulus bill.  read more »