Last Friday, John Boehner and the House GOP managed to drag Harry “Cowboy Poet” Reid and President Obama into about $40 billion in spending cuts for the remainder of the fiscal year. How’s this for a pivot?

Harry Reid, Feb. 3, 2011, on Paul Ryan’s initial offer of $32 billion in spending cuts:

The chairman of the Budget Committee today, today sent us something even more draconian than we originally anticipated…So this isn’t some game that people have been playing. The House of Representatives [is] actually sending us some of these unworkable plans.

Harry Reid, April 9, 2011, on a deal to cut $38.5 billion:

This is historic, what we’ve done.

Cartoonist Michael Ramirez had a widely circulated cartoon showing just how much of a pittance this whole debate was over.

Now the adult discussion begins. Rep. Paul Ryan has already unveiled his budget proposal which is both painful and barely sufficient at the same time. It’s shocking how much of a hole we’ve dug in such a relatively short time that even some serious cuts like Ryan is proposing take decades to get us on sound fiscal footing.

President Obama, whose original budget plan was a complete and total joke, has promised something more serious. It won’t turn out to be a whole lot more serious—he wants to raise taxes on the rich. Set aside for the moment the inconvenient fact that he couldn’t get the Bush tax cuts repealed when he still had control of both houses of Congress in the lame duck session with a whole lot of defeated Democrats with nothing to lose. Instead, watch this video from Bill Whittle:

Someone needs to tell Obama that he can’t get there from here.