The following all happened just this week:

Item 1.  The Conrad-Gregg commission, which needed 60 votes in the Senate, was defeated 53-46.  The amendment creating the commission would have been adopted 60-39 if all of the GOP senators who co-sponsored the amendment voted for it.  Instead, seven of the Republican co-sponsors withdrew their co-sponsorship the week before the vote and then voted against it.

Item 2. All Senate Republicans voted against re-establishing the pay-as-you go rules, which would have required that, with certain exceptions, any new mandatory spending or revenue legislation not increase the deficit.  The rules were adopted with only Democratic support.

What does the 53-46 vote mean for the prospects of deficit reduction?

The short answer is nothing good.

That doesn't mean that the prospects would have been much better had the amendment been adopted and the commission created.  It just means we now have a pretty good indication of what the politics of deficit reduction is at the moment.

And it's ugly.

Although some will try to make a big deal about the fact that the amendment received 53 out of 99 votes and, therefore, got a majority, that argument doesn't really fly in a world where the U.S. needs 60 votes to do almost anything and less than a super majority gets you nothing.  This is especially the case on budget issues.   You can say that Conrad and Gregg made a good effort.  But the amendment was defeated.

The defeat was absolutely bipartisan: 22 Democrats plus Independent Bernie Sanders (VT) and 23 Republicans voted against it.  Here's the list of the nays from The Library of Congress' Thomas:

On the one hand, as 2010 begins the moon, stars, and planets are perfectly aligned for a major deficit reduction effort. 

For example...Not only does the economy appear to be recovering and concern is starting to shift from the need for more stimulus to the need to think about future inflation, but (appropriately or not) last year created some pent-up political demand for deficit reduction.  Blue Dog Democrats think a deficit reduction effort is owed to them for all they supported in 2009.  The White House has been saying for months that reducing the deficit will be its budget mantra in 2010.  Republicans have been insisting that deficit reduction is what's needed.  Some major overseas buyers of Treasuries have been saying they need to see some progress on the deficit this year. And the U.S. bond market seems to expect deficit reduction and, if it doesn't happen, it may express its disappointment with higher interest rates at the precise time they could damage the recovery.

But it's not at all clear that having the budget moon, stars, and planets in alignment means the same thing it has before.

I’m having increasing trouble identifying with the religious-like fervor many deficit hawks are expressing these days.  I also don’t think the hawks are advancing the debate by their take-no-prisoners attitude that often seems to cross the line to zealotry.

I need to emphasize from the start that I’m talking about real, substantively based deficit hawks rather than those who condemn deficits only when it suits their political purposes. This definitely does not include those who only think the deficit is terrible when the other political party is in the majority. In my mind you don’t qualify as hawk if you talk about the deficit but then fail to support the spending cuts and tax increases that would actually reduce it. In case anyone is wondering, you also aren’t a deficit hawk if all you do is support largely symbolic efforts like process changes.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start from the beginning.

You can’t work on the federal budget as long as I have without being very concern

(Note: I'm tempted to simply say "same old, same old."  In fact, the results shown below don't seem have changed much in the more than three decades since I started working on the federal budget.  Andrew is too young to be able to say that, but I suspect that if they admitted to their real age Pete and Bruce would agree.)

Just in case you have any doubts about why there are deficits, this paper from the American Enterprise Institute with a compilation of polling results about attitudes toward government involvement in the economy and federal spending says it all.  Here are excerpts from the money quotes:

Questions that ask Americans whether they would like a smaller government with fewer services or a larger government with more services usually produce a preference for smaller government. 

Two excellent posts from Paul Krugman today and yesterday about why for substantive and technical reasons the federal deficit and debt aren't the threats to the economy some say they are.  I agree; substantively there is little to complain about.  The fiscal policy in place over the past year has been a success by any objective measure.

But the next to last word in that last sentence -- "objective" is the key.  No matter how much we might wish it to be otherwise, this is anything but an objective discussion. The federal budget deficit and debt are political rather than technical issues and that means dealing with fact isn't likely to change many minds.

Thanks to a late-Friday "leak" from the White House (note the 6:50 pm date stamp on the article), we now know the bottomlines of what will be in the mid-session budget review the Office of Management and Budget will release on Tuesday.  The deficit will be lower than expected in 2009 and, as Pete correctly predicted, higher than previously forecast in 2010 and beyond.

This will lead to the three almost-always-most-likely-to-be-asked deficit-related questions being asked when the OMB and CBO mid-session reviews are actually released.

1.  Whose fault is it?

The usual partisan divide will immediately occur with this question: Democrats will blame George W. Bush and Republicans will blame Barack Obama.

Imagine how all those self-professed, anti-new entitlement fiscal conservatives in Washington and around the country are going to feel when they realize that, with their full support, enthusiasm, and (in some cases) votes, Cash for Clunkers is the equivalent of a new entitlement program.

Here's what I said about this in my Roll Call column today.

The White House yesterday did something that should truly warm the hearts of deficit hawks everywhere: it threated to veto the 2010 military authorization bill over two big spending issues -- the F22 and the alternate engine for the F35.

A little background.  Although both of these programs were questioned for years by the Bush White House, Congress kept insisting that the Pentagon spend the money anyway and the president always went along.  This year, the F22 was a target of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates when he held a press conference in April on his budget priorities.  Several weeks later, President Obama specifically used both programs as examples of government waste and then requested no funds for them in his budget.  In between those two events, Citizens Against Government Waste declared both to be prime examples of pork and listed them prominently in its Pig Book.

Matt Miller is a very smart guy, a friend, and someone whose wisdom on the budget I almost always find worthwhile.  But not this time.

In his most recent post from The Daily Beast, Matt suggests that the White House consider what he admits are largely symbolic proposals so that it can improve its polls on the deficit and put itself in a better position to deal with it when the appropriate time comes.

My suggestion is that Matt and everyone else, especially the White House, just chill.  The president has already done a number of symbolic things on the deficit, including holding a fiscal responsibility summit several days before its budget was released last February and proposing a new pay-as-you-go proposal.  It has that angle covered and then some.