By Quin Hillyer
This budget deal is an abomination. It must be defeated. I write that as somebody who once served on the House Appropriations Committee staff. And as somebody who still contends that John Boehner’s “Plan B” for the expiring Bush tax cuts was a better deal than the one we ended up with when the harder-line Right (of which I am often a member) refused to back Plan B. So, while I am a lifelong budget hawk, I’m not averse to reasonable agreements that move in the right direction. This is not reasonable, and it moves in the wrong direction.