269-161. Or, if you prefer, ruling class 1, American people, well, they don’t really get a say, do they…?

I’ve been having an email exchange with a representative from a group called Freedom Action, who sent out a press release supporting the Boehner plan (unconfirmed reports are beginning to trickle in that Boehner has the votes to get this thing passed). Here’s the text of the original press release: Washington, D.C., August 1, 2011 – Freedom Action supports enactment of the bi-partisan debt ceiling deal reached over the weekend.

From Precious Ezra Klein: Democrats are going to lose this one. The first stage of the emerging deal doesn’t include revenue, doesn’t include stimulus, and lets Republicans pocket a trillion dollars or more in cuts without offering anything to Democrats in return. Isn’t that fun? “Pocketing a trillion dollars” — again, as if these dollars — really 40 cents of which is borrowed — were not created by the sweat

In short, don’t do it. But here’s that same sentiment, dressed up in lots more words: It is a tremendous victory for free market activists that, for the first time in history, the debate over raising the debt limit became a debate over cutting spending. For that, we should be heartened that our efforts are truly making a difference. But we must continue to fight, because this deal is simply

And to think, we used to make fun of Nancy Pelosi for saying such a thing. It’ll be great fun using it on the Weekly Standard crew, the FOX News Bushies, half of NRO, Jen Jen, The Commentary crowd, and all the serious, sober, pragmatic realists that, by working to drive through a tough-fought “compromise,” have shown the Tea Party extremist fringe Hobbit racist purists just how we get ‘er

I envision small but comfy changes to Middle Earth, beginning with a nice wetbar and maybe a poker table, with a rubber-coated seat for the shelled panzer rat (who has a tendency toward incontinence when he’s holding three of a kind or better; makes him an easy mark, but trust me, with a diet of tequila and grub worms leaking out of his urethra, I’d just rather he keep the

Steve Chapman, Reason: We have heard a lot lately about plans to slash spending by trillions of dollars. Though these sound like deep cuts, they are not even shallow cuts. Under the plans being discussed in Washington, federal spending would rise, and so would the federal debt—not by a little, but by a lot. Consider Speaker John Boehner’s blueprint, which envisions savings of some $3 trillion over 10 years. The

This “compromise” deal, which amounts to a vote for a near immediate raising of the nation’s debt in exchange for the promise to shave a trifling sum off future deficit spending (to put it into perspective, Obama’s “one-time” stimulus money of $1.6 Trillion is now a permanent part of the budget baseline; this deal, each year, would “cut” a rounding error off that), does nothing credit agencies were demanding; and