The crafty Senate majority and minority leaders announced a two-year budget deal that marks the end of the disastrous 2011 Budget Control Act. News reports indicate that “the plan eliminates mandatory spending cuts for two years and increases Pentagon spending by $80 billion and domestic spending by $63 billion for the 2018 fiscal year.” The bill includes funding for disaster relief, children’s health care and funding for fighting the opioid addiction. On the defense side of the ledger, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declared, “First and foremost, this bipartisan agreement will unwind the sequestration cuts that have hamstrung our armed forces and jeopardized our national security. [Defense] Secretary [Jim] Mattis said that, quote, ‘no enemy in the field has done more to harm the readiness of our military than sequestration.’ . . . We haven’t asked our men and women in uniform to do less for our country. We have just forced them to make do with less than they need. This agreement changes that.”

1. Democrats won what they have been looking for since 2011 — an end to the painful cap on domestic spending. Both parties now can claim credit for fully funding the military...

3. Pro-DACA advocates ironically have a better shot at getting a deal than they did when they were tying DACA to the budget. The reason: McConnell promised a shell bill will be put on the floor, allowing free-flowing amendments. If there are 60 votes (as backers of DACA insist), then they will get their bill out of the Senate regardless of what Stephen Miller or John F. Kelly or Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) want. Moreover, that bill very well could have none of the poison pills Trump wants stuffed into the deal (e.g., limits on legal immigration).

4. But the House won’t vote for DACA? That is likely the case, but the only shot the DACA proponents have is to pass the bill our of the Senate and apply pressure to Ryan to bring it to the House floor. If he does not (very possible), he and his fellow Republicans on the ballot in 2018 will face the voters. His insistence that he won’t allow a vote on a bill that Trump/Miller/Cotton don’t like will be evidence of his failure to fulfill his role as speaker of a co-equal branch. Moreover, just about everyone in town knows that if both houses pass a DACA fix, Trump won’t have the nerve to oppose it.