So is this budget deal a big deal, really?

 Both sides are now claiming great success in the budget negotiations (including, ironically,  the Democrats and President Obama, who fought it tooth and nail).  Is this really a great accomplishment?

Let’s put this deal in context.  Here is a small table (you can find the original at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals) with the federal outlays and deficit/surplus (in millions) for the past ten years, including both on-budget and off-budget outlays (since Congress likes to hide some costs off budget):

Fiscal Year	Receipts	Outlays	Deficit/Surplus
2000	2,025,191	1,788,950	236,241
2001	1,991,082	1,862,846	128,236
2002	1,853,136	2,010,894	-157,758
2003	1,782,314	2,159,899	-377,585
2004	1,880,114	2,292,841	-412,727
2005	2,153,611	2,471,957	-318,346
2006	2,406,869	2,655,050	-248,181
2007	2,567,985	2,728,686	-160,701
2008	2,523,991	2,982,544	-458,553
2009	2,104,989	3,517,677	-1,412,688
2010	2,162,724	3,456,213	-1,293,489

Notice the huge $1 TRILLION dollar increase in the annual deficit beginning in 2009, when the Obama administration came in. Notice also that federal outlays jump about half a trillion dollars beginning in 2009.

So in the face of this, does a $39.5 billion dollar cut seem like much?  True, it is better than nothing (and certainly more than the Democrats were willing to consider when this fight started), but despite all the ballyhoo it isn’t a drop in the bucket compared to the half trillion dollar increase in outlays that the Obama administration put in place in 2009. In fact, it is only about a 7% reduction in the half-trillion dollar INCREASE the the Obama administration put in place in 2009. I'd hardly call that much of an accomplishment!