Don’t celebrate the budget agreement. It imperils America.

Washington Post, February 11, 2018

That we celebrate the bipartisan budget agreement approved last week shows how far we have slipped as a democracy since President Barack Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner tried to tackle our fiscal problem.
It’s a decline that imperils our ability to keep America great.
It is true that government did not shut down last week (well, not for long) and that the United States will keep paying its debts (at least for now). The alternatives, entirely imaginable in today’s Washington, would have been worse.

But think back to the Obama-Boehner negotiations in 2012 and 2013. Then, you might recall, the dispute was over how to balance two difficult things: tax hikes and entitlement cuts. Neither was popular, but Democrats understood we needed one, Republicans knew we needed the other. Together, politicians were — almost — ready to put the nation on sounder financial footing.

Now we cheer because Democrats and Republicans agree to let each other increase domestic and military spending, respectively.
We have gone from arguing over portions of spinach and broccoli, in other words, to congratulating ourselves for letting each other eat as much of two different kinds of ice cream as we want.
Look, the Democrats crow, we got $131 billion of mint chocolate chip! We win!
No, say the Republicans, we got $165 billion of butter pecan! We win!
As to difficult things — those are for suckers. If the other party won’t go there, why should we?