Posted 10:20 PM by Gene

The only short-term effect of this deal is making the Wall Street Casino money. It will likely not solve our problems long term, but thankfully the hard swallowing can come later, as it always does. And too much of our recent history suggests we may gag, in several ways.

We have not talked about this continuing migraine because it's an analog of the Obamacare disaster. Then Democrats wanted to spend money. Now Republicans want not to spend money. The Republicans did this largely to prevent the Democrats from spending money. Both parties demonstrated their love of the people with arm-twisting and bansheeing. The first disaster was unnecessary because we all knew deep down Obamacare would be a quagmire. It's hard to care deeply about this because the chief end product of this legislative-Gordian-knot-untying will be what Obamacare produced: prodigious accounting tricks. And this proved to be every bit the short-term quagmire as Obamacare will be long-term. The only good thing is that the current speaker doesn't know how to be a screaming maniac like the last one -- or at least not as much.

This does not rank with the Republic's finest moments. More such moments as this and we may not have a Republic.