Nick Gillespie on the federal budget “deal,” in which Rep. Paul Ryan (R–Janesville) surrendered to Sen. Patty Murray (D–Washington), creating, to no one’s surprise, a bad deal for taxpayers:

The deal is supposed to save the country from the dread threat of “sequestration,” or a series of automatic, generally across-the-board cuts imposed by the last budget deal, passed in the summer of 2011.

The short version of the deal, which covers discretionary spending over the next two years? The feds will spend $45 billion more in 2014 than they would absent a deal and another $20 billion more in 2015. Various “fees” (not taxes, never taxes!) will go up too, allowing Ryan and Murray to tout this as a plan to save “$28 billion over ten years by requiring the President to sequester the same percentage of mandatory budgetary resources in 2022 and 2023 as will be sequestered in 2021 under current law.”

Thus the following table, which shows increases in spending from current law:

Whew, that was a close call, wasn’t it? The truly minuscule trims to mandatory spending are unaffected, meaning that all the problems with major entitlement programs still exist and will only get worse. But the important thing is that we’ve avoided the “dumb” cuts imposed by sequestration that would have truly devastated discretionary spending, right?

Here’s a chart by Reason columnist and Mercatus Center economist Veronique de Rugy that reminds us just how draconian the cuts imposed by sequestration really were:

She’s updated the chart to make projections through 2023. The growth rate of spending, based on Congressional Budget Office (CBO) figures, shows that the sequester wasn’t a big deal at all.

Real federal spending has indeed flattened over the past few years, partly because of the sort of gridlock that led to sequestration and partly because it had been jacked up for so long and then with a giant burst at the very end of the Bush presidency and the start of the Obama years. Here’s a bonus chart, also courtesy of de Rugy, that shows the general trend over the past several decades:

If you care about shrinking the size, scope, and spending of government – and you should if you care about “Free Minds and Free Markets” both – there’s not a lot of reason to cheer this latest deal and, even more sadly, what might eventually replace it. Because as the chart above shows, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of ability to flatten spending, at least since World War II, for any length of time.

Buzzfeed feels differently, apparently thinking that the process is more important than the result:

Under normal circumstances the deal — which appears to have enough Democratic and Republicans support to pass — would at best be considered a minor success: it does little to address either long-term spending needs or drastically reduce the deficit, and doesn’t include significant reforms to entitlement programs.

But in a Congress that measures success in how few days its incompetence results in a government shutdown, the Ryan-Murray deal marks a legislative high-water mark.

Indeed, Ryan has succeeded where his party’s official leadership has failed since taking control of the House three years ago: Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, all of whom are master politicians, have tried, and failed, to cut agreements large and small to avoid another round of legislating by crisis.

“There’s nobody better than Paul Ryan. There’s nobody more knowledgeable and nobody more principled that Paul Ryan. So that gives me a lot of confidence just knowing that it’s him. The trust is high. I think everybody knows him and he’s one of the most respected individuals in Congress period. By both sides,” Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart said Tuesday, just hours before Ryan and Murray announced their deal.

It wasn’t just mainstream Republicans like Diaz-Balart who were praising Ryan, even before the deal was cut. Conservatives — who have consistently been a thorn in the side of leadership and scuttled numerous bipartisan agreements — were also effusive in their praise.

“I’m very supportive of Chairman Ryan and I’ve been very concerned about sequester and how it effects the military … It is a real achievement. I’m as surprised as anyone. We’ve seen the ‘Super Committee’ and how they didn’t come through,” said Rep. Joe Wilson. …

That’s not to say everyone will vote for it, but unlike with deals past, Republican members said that a healthy amount of conservative “no” votes wouldn’t mean the death of the deal. Republicans readily acknowledge the vote will rely on a good chunk of Democratic votes, but Rep. Darrell Issa predicted the “majority” of the conference would end up supporting it despite staunch opposition from outside conservative groups.

“Conservative groups would like to get more, I’d like to get more. But if what we want to do is keep the government open and get a trajectory of savings for now, and then argue in the 2014 elections that we should be more willing to do more than this combination then that’s the right thing to do. What Chairman Ryan has done artfully has gotten what there was to get,” Issa said.

Out here in the real working taxpaying world, government “shutdowns” (which aren’t shutdowns at all) and sequestration are good things. That is the attitude of those who should be disgusted by government at every level (even the lowly township), not getting paychecks from government.

Facebook Friend Ken Gardner adds:

Budgets are not binding on any future Congress. The current deal would impose caps on future discretionary spending, but a future Congress, for better or worse, is free to change them. More to the point, GOPers currently lack the political power to get deeper cuts in discretionary spending, much less real entitlement reform. This simply won’t happen with Democrats controlling the Senate and Obama in the White House.

There are no guarantees that our fiscal situation will improve if we elect more Republicans to Congress. I think it will, but that’s not quite the same thing. But you can be 100% certain that Democrats will only make the problem even worse. Borrowing, spending, taxing, regulating, and coercively redistributing wealth to their supporters and donors is their bread and butter and their “solution” to every problem.

On a scale of 1 to 10, your political cynicism level should be at approximately 43. Only in politics can a “deal” that does nothing constructive other than increase reelection chances for incumbents be considered a win.