Lowry: The Budget Dog That Didn't Bark

Rich Lowry writes in National Review:

If you propose stiff budget cuts and don’t get called “heartless, ” does it really count?

Republicans passed an unheard-of $61 billion in budget cuts a few weeks ago, and not only have lived to tell the tale, but have emerged without a scratch. They piled all of them on one slice of the budget (nonsecurity discretionary spending) over a compressed period (half of the remaining fiscal year), magnifying their impact and opening themselves to avenues of attack so obvious that the average College Democrat could write the campaign plan.

The usual liberal outfits raised the usual alarms. “House Bill Means Fewer Children in Head Start, Less Help for Students to Attend College, Less Job Training, and Less Funding for Clean Water” warned the headline of a report of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. The cut in nonsecurity domestic spending for the remainder of fiscal year 2011, it noted in astonishment, was nearly 25 percent. For some specific categories of spending it reached higher: minus 38.5 percent for agriculture, rural development, and the Food and Drug Administration, and minus 36.5 percent for transportation and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

There’s a word for such cuts: “impossible.” There’s a word for people who would undertake such cuts: “suicidal.” And yet White House and Senate Democrats have been backpedaling for weeks, accepting a higher and higher number for cuts in the so-called continuing resolution for funding for the rest of this fiscal year.

The latest in the highly fluid negotiations was that the Democrats could accept another $23 billion in cuts, on top of the $10 billion that has already been passed in stopgap measures. That number would be higher than the original cuts proposed by House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan, before the tea-party members within the Republican caucus doubled them. In other words, Vice President Joe Biden — Mr. Stimulus and the White House’s negotiator — is ending up where Ryan — the budget hawk extraordinaire — started out.

In the battle between stimulus and austerity, austerity is winning in a rout.

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