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.”…

Whew, that was a close call, wasn’t it? The truly miniscule 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?