The agreement comes as a relief for another reason: It marks an assertion of power by mainstream Republicans against Tea Party extremists. Speaker John Boehner and the rest of the Republican Party leadership finally concluded that they can no longer afford to let the party’s most uncompromising wing, and interest groups like Heritage Action and Club for Growth, dictate the GOP agenda. Those groups have come out against the Ryan-Murray deal, but unlike in previous showdowns, the Republican leadership in the House has swatted them down, with Boehner himself publicly chastising them. In the final House vote, Republicans supported the measure by 169-62, and Democrats by 163-32. The bill goes on to the Senate, which is likely to pass it, despite the opposition of many conservatives.
Like all compromises, the legislation is imperfect. Some Democrats, and also some Republicans, have grumbled about the failure to include an extension of unemployment benefits, but that can be done separately. The bill also does not raise the debt ceiling, which leaves open the possibility of another showdown. Hopefully, though, the sobering experience of October, when the last debt-ceiling fight nearly triggered a calamitous government default, has convinced Republican hard-liners not to resort to that tactic again.
This agreement is also not the kind of “grand bargain” that leaders of both parties once professed to want, a historic step forward in aligning long-term revenues and spending. The deal does nothing to control rising Medicare costs, for instance, and it won’t lead to a long-term drawdown in military spending.
But that might not be such a bad thing. The operating assumption in Washington for the last few years has been that with Republicans running the House and Democrats in control of the White House and the Senate, a grand bargain would be easier to hammer out than a series of smaller bargains. Experience has proved otherwise. Perhaps by taking the immediate budgetary fights off the table, the Ryan-Murray deal will allow legislators to turn their focus to the long term.