TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Cato’s Chris Edwards on the debt deal:

Wait a minute, those bars are rising! Spending isn’t being cut at all.  The “cuts” in the deal are only cuts from the CBO “baseline,” which is a Washington construct of ever-rising spending. And even these “cuts” from the baseline include $156 billion of interest savings, which are imaginary because the underlying cuts are imaginary.

Remember, in Washington, “cutting spending” doesn’t actually mean reducing it. It means decreasing the percentage spending will increase.

That’s important to remember when ostensibly respectable people like Paul Krugman are yelling from rooftops that Democrats surrendered to Republicans and cutting spending during a recession is abject stupidity. Redefining “cut spending” and “fiscal responsibility” to “reduce the growth of spending that has nothing to do with our long-term fiscal disaster” is already a terribly large victory for liberals who support larger government, because it makes it even more difficult to make serious cuts.