Maybe Democrats Didn't Do So Bad In The Budget Deal After All

The original Ryan Budget called for $1.0139 trillion in discretionary spending in 2014. The Murray-Ryan deal sets is at $1.012 trillion. Seems like a huge loss for Democrats, right? Not so fast.

The chart we posted yesterday from the Center for American Progress (CAP) compared the final budget agreement with different budget proposals made by Rep. Paul Ryan, Senate Democrats and President Obama the past few years. The discretionary spending in the final deal was well below the president's proposal ($1.203 trillion) and the Senate budget ($1.058 trillion), but above this year's Ryan Budget ($967 billion). Still, the fact that discretionary spending will be less next year than in the original Ryan Budget was shocking. Had Democrats accepted more austerity than Ryan even originally envisioned?

Yes and no.

Loren Adler from the Center for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) dug into the numbers and broke them out by defense and non-defense spending. That tells a different story. Take a look:

Total discretionary spending in the Murray-Ryan budget is below that of the original Ryan budget, but that is only because of defense spending. In Ryan's original budget, he called for $620 billion in defense spending. The final agreement has $90 billion less.

On the non-defense side, the original Ryan budget called for $429 billion in spending, but the final amount was $63 billion more than that.

Compared with the original Ryan Budget, defense spending is way down and non-defense up, leaving total discretionary spending a bit down overall. That's still not good but it isn't as bad as CAP's chart suggests.

(h/t Brad Plumer)