Ed Morrissey:

This looks less like a victory for either side and more of a five-month truce. The fight to cut just a tiny slice of the overall budget took months to resolve, and all of these issue will arise again in September when Congress has to pass the FY2012 budget. Don't expect the fight to get any easier, at least not on discretionary spending.

But that's not the big problem anyway. The big problem in the budget is entitlement spending, which will require months to review for reform. The only proposal on the table for that at the moment is Ryan's plan. The other option would be to consider the Bowles-Simpson plan, but since Bowles and Simpson both gave at least praise for Ryan's proposal, Ryan has the momentum. Now, with FY2011 off the table, the House can move forward on serious entitlement reform that will give an actual opportunity to get significant reductions to the deficit and start us on the path of fiscal sanity.

We'll see who won in September, but Republicans have achieved one major accomplishment. Not only did they force the first actual reductions in government spending in ages, but they have changed the political paradigm from whether to cut to how much and where to cut. That's a pretty impressive victory for a party that only controls one chamber of Congress.

I think Ed is over stressing budget realities that even Obama recognizes as necessary. For giving what they consider so much in this round, the Democrats will really dig in their heels in September. As Ed correctly points out, this is just a 5-month truce. The real showdown will occur in a couple of weeks with the vote to raise the debt ceiling, and then a donnybrook next September over the FY 2012 budget.

We shall see how much the Democrats have acceded to the debate over spending being "how much" rather than "any at all."