WSJ: Budget Agreement Likely to Be ‘Bad Deal’

Budget negotiations between the White House and Congress are headed toward a negative outcome, according to a Wall Street Journal editorial.

“It's clear by now that the budget talks are drifting in a drearily familiar Washington direction: tax and spending increases now, in return for the promise of spending cuts and tax and entitlement reform later,” Journal editors write.

“This is a bad deal for everyone except the politicians who want more money to spend.”

House Speaker Boehner’s support for a tax hike on families with annual income of more than $1 million beats the heck out of President Barack Obama’s original proposal to raise taxes on those with income of more than $250,000, the editorial states. But that “would still put the GOP on record as endorsing a tax increase, in particular on small businesses that file individual returns.”

As for tax reform, it looks like that’s going to mean both higher rates and fewer deductions, Journal editors write. “This isn't reform. It's another tax increase next year disguised as reform.”

What about spending cuts and entitlement reform? “These look notional at best,” the editorial says.

The coup de grace is Obama’s demand for short-term stimulus spending. “We thought this exercise was about deficit reduction,” the editors state. “But as always in Washington, the method is to put deficit ‘savings’ into the future as part of a fanciful 10-year budget estimate while adding to the deficit in the near term by spending more now.”