Turning point in spending battle?

Politico reports:

Filling in the blank spaces from the August debt accords, Congress approved a far-reaching $1 trillion-plus budget bill Saturday morning that sets a new template for government spending through the 2012 elections — and very well beyond.

Final passage came on a 67-32 Senate roll call which followed on a strong 296-121 bipartisan vote in the House Friday afternoon.

The action caps a year of remarkable turmoil in which the Republican-controlled House seemed forever the aggressor—and President Barack Obama one step behind. Very little real deficit reduction has emerged from all the bloodshed, but the bill now is an exception and testifies to a fragile political center that has begun to reassert itself and demand some level of order.

Filling over 1200 pages, the appropriations giant is remarkable for its reach – touching thousands of accounts from Pakistan counterinsurgency aid to Pell Grants for low-income American college students. Ten Cabinet departments and the Environmental Protection Agency share in the core appropriations of about $917 billion and an additional $126.5 billion is provided in overseas contingency funds, chiefly for U.S. military operations in Afghanistan.

Overshadowed by the payroll tax fight — and largely dismissed in the press as another anonymous “year-end spending bill” — the measure may be seen with time as a real turning point. Certainly for the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, enactment of the bill became crucial if they were ever again to be a force in the budget debate.

We can only dream of real cuts at this time.