UnNews:Everyone got rolled in the budget deal

This article is part of UnNews, your source for up-to-the-picosecond misinformation.

13 April 2011

You mean we don't have a deal after all? It's enough to make a grown Speaker cry, again.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The eleventh-hour U.S. budget deal, agreed to thirty minutes before the U.S. government was set to shut down and subject Americans to a barrage of normality, is not home safe just yet.

The agreement reached late last Friday evening is so complicated that it won't be ready for a vote until Thursday. And in the meantime, both sides are convinced they got rolled. Grover Norquist told Yahoo! that President Obama "caved," as he reversed course and essentially gave a speech for the Republicans. Mr. Norquist's organization, Americans for No Taxes, is just like the Tea Party Movement would be, if it could tell you who was in it or what it believed in.

Meanwhile, wire services reported that Mr. Obama counted money he was planning to cut anyway, money he had already given back, money unspent in 2010, and money that cannot legally be spent, as part of the $38 billion in "cuts."

In short, both parties are now on record saying "never mind" on each of the issues they told voters was so crucial in the 2010 election--and each has a clipping to post on the bulletin board of their caucus rooms, much as football coaches post the opponent's hometown newspaper before a big game to work players into a lather when they read how the other side says they are a bunch of stiffs. Prominent members of both parties are ready to stab their leaders in the back and torpedo the deal, and leadership can only say they will make up the votes--thanks to the other side. In place of another bill that no one likes or will even read entirely, America may instead face the shutdown that no one says he wants.

UnNews publisher Morris Greeley was frantically punching speed-dial this morning to call laid-off reporters back to work, as it appears there may be a need for heartstring-tugging human-interest pieces after all.

Sources

• Aaron Task "Obama “Caved”: Why Grover Norquist Thinks the GOP Will Keep Winning" Yahoo!, April 12, 2011

• Andrew Taylor "Budget tricks helped Obama save programs from cuts" Associated Press, April 12, 2011