Washington-Speak "How to cut the budget"

They say, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder."   And a "budget cut" means different things to different people.   If someone takes a cut in pay, we generally believe that he now earns $25,000 instead of $30,000.   That's a real cut.
But in the hallowed halls of Congress, "cut" means something else when referring to the budget.   Instead of spending $10 Trillion in the next 10 years, we agree to spend "only" $7 Trillion, a "cut" of $3 Trillion.  We don't cut spending by $3 Trillion.... no, we continue to spend more every year than the year before but just less of an increase than we planned to spend.  The debt continues to grow larger every year and the interest on the debt grows larger every year.  Instead of sprinting to bankruptcy, we merely are jogging to bankruptcy.

A wife proudly tells her husband that she found a real bargain and she bought a new coat for $500 that had been marked down from $700.  "Gee, honey, I saved you $200 today.  Isn't that great?"

The argument over the budget is not about freezing spending at a certain level and then reducing it from there.  No, it is reducing the rate of increase of the spending.  We call that little slight of hand 'baseline budgeting.'   For instance, a 10% annual increase would be budgeted for a 5% increase if the full 10% had not been spent the year before.  So, a 5% increase becomes a 50% cut.  Nice.

Definition of a deal:
A deal is an agreement where each party thinks he has outwitted the other.