Sham

It's been an obvious sham all along, of course. But as this NYT report makes clear, any "budget deal" will not involve any actual legislation.

The emerging budget deal, which could reach into scores of complex federal programs that will have to be restructured to produce the savings, creates a whole different set of problems.

“That was about numbers,” Senator Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat who is the chairman of the Budget Committee, said of the earlier agreement that averted a government shutdown. “This is about policy.”

Put another way, negotiators cannot just wave a magic budget wand and change the farm subsidy program to get billions of dollars in savings; the appropriate panels in the House and the Senate also have to weigh in.

“You can’t supersede the jurisdiction of the committees,” said Senator Saxby Chambliss, a Georgia Republican taking part in budget talks being conducted by a rump group. “If anybody comes out and says, ‘You have to reduce spending on Ag by X number of dollars,’ ” he said, referring to the Department of Agriculture, “then the Ag Committee is the one that is going to have to do that.”

Those taking part in the main budget talks say they are only beginning to grapple with the mechanics of putting any agreement into place. What they decide could influence how the deal itself is structured and sold to lawmakers.

They have to pass the debt ceiling extension. They can't possibly put any promised cuts into legislation in time for the extension. Just a shiny object for the various gasbags to wave at each other.