What Progressive Era?

Congress passed a two-year budget bill that sets a framework for the next two years.  The bipartisan budget agreement avoids the threat of a government shutdown for the next two years, restores $63 billion in cuts rendered by the unpopular sequester, and leaves Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.  So there's a new spirit of cooperation in Washington that will benefit ordinary Americans, right?

Wrong!  The canceled sequester cuts are replaced with other cuts, there are new pension requirements for future federal employees, and there's a 1% reduction in cost of living adjustments to working-age military retirees. It also includes an additional $23 billion to reduced the deficit through extending health care cuts through 2023.  Not only does it let the Republicans off the hook from future shutdowns, it does not provide any money to extend benefits to the long-term unemployed, and it leaves the debt limit unresolved - an opportunity for congressional Republicans to extort further concessions form the Democrats before they'll even consider allowing some Democratic initiatives (which will never happen anyway).

Remember when the presidential election of 2008 was supposed to usher in a new progressive era?  Yeah, right.  You'll notice that I didn't mention in this post the name of the President who was elected that year.  He's as irrelevant as American progressivism.