End result: $14.7 billion in actual cuts.
(National Journal) — The meat of the spending deal struck between the two parties late Friday night was revealed in a legislative omnibus released early Tuesday morning. 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.
White House officials said throughout the process that the composition of the cuts was more important than the top-line number, and that including mandatory cuts allowed that top line to grow while limiting the immediate impact of the cuts.
The move also keeps the 2011 discretionary baseline slightly higher, a terrain advantage for the Democrats heading into the 2012 spending process.
Republican press releases are pointing out that the deal eliminates four White House policy “czars,” but those positions had already been phased out by the White House — the health care policy director after Obama’s health care plan became law, and the “auto czar” following the government restructuring of General Motors and Chrysler.
Despite finding common ground on many cuts, Republicans say the bill sets the stage for further cuts in a vote to raise the government’s borrowing limit and in 2012 spending, shifting the conversation in Washington.
Still, the GOP collected its pound(s) of flesh from the $1.3 trillion federal budget and Obama’s priorities: $1.6 billion in reductions at the Environmental Protection Agency, though that is nearly half what the House asked for in February; nearly a billion from drinking water funds at the Department of the Interior; $2.9 billion in high-speed rail money, and hundreds of millions in public housing funds, among other savings.