By Stephen Moore

From the Wall Street Journal:

[I]t looks as if budget restraint in D.C. is beginning to waver. Congress and the White House are quietly negotiating a deal for the new fiscal year that would bust the spending caps that have brought down the deficit. Breaking the caps yet again—this would be the third violation in four years—is lousy policy. It’s also bad politics for Republicans, who won control of Congress by promising budgetary discipline.

Yet the GOP is reportedly forging a compromise with Mr. Obama that would raise the caps by $70 billion to $100 billion. “We are inevitably going to end up in a negotiation that will crack the Budget Control Act once again,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said last month. “There’s a lot of pressure in Congress to spend more.” Alas, pressure from both parties.

My congressional sources tell me that half of the extra money would go to social programs and half to defense. This would represent a year-over-year increase in federal discretionary expenditures of about 7%, when inflation is only 2%. What’s worse, the deal would likely raise the spending caps permanently, meaning it could add nearly $1 trillion to the debt over the next decade.

Photo Credit: davitydave