By Gerald F. Seib and David Wessel


    How the Budget Deal Stacks Up


    If signed into law, their effort would look relatively puny in the Richter scale of fiscal agreements that have come and gone over the past few years. But it would be one of the only bipartisan deals in recent years that moved through the traditional Washington budget process.



    –Damian Paletta


    Recommended reading from around the Web:

    Carol Lee (@carol_e_lee) describes the Air Force One flight to Nelson Mandela‘s funeral, which carried President Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton: “For more than 16 hours Mr. Obama, Mr. Bush and Mrs. Clinton—all one-time political rivals—roamed the confines of the presidential aircraft. Indeed, by the time they return to Washington on Wednesday, they will have spent significantly more time with each other in the air than on the ground in Johannesburg.” [WSJ]

    Harvard law professor Noah Feldman (@NoahRFeldman) says Nelson Mandela sold out black South Africans by guaranteeing property rights of white South Africans in exchange for an end to apartheid. “He brought peace through his ability to convince millions of his countrymen that they should accept much less than they were in justice owed.” [Bloomberg View]

    People around the world are becoming more open to receiving health care outside of hospitals, and technology increasingly is making mobile and customized care possible; as a result, a majority of people think traditional hospitals will become obsolete. [Forbes]

    Brookings scholars offer five ideas to improve even the kind of unambitious budget deal that seems to be taking shape in Congress, including making some relatively modest changes to Social Security to improve its long-term solvency. [Brookings]

    David Simon, creator of “The Wire,” recoils at the widening divide between rich and poor in the US. “I’m utterly committed to the idea that capitalism has to be the way we generate mass wealth in the coming century,” he says. But he finds it “astonishing” that there is no social compact about how to distribute the benefits so everyone in the society has a reasonable minimum. [The Guardian]

    New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has dismissed 2016 rumors, and it’s too late for him anyway, write Maggie Haberman (@maggiepolitico) and Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere). Though the governor has an attractive record in his state—a socially liberal, fiscally moderate one that would be a “good sell” in 2016—he has missed his chance to lay groundwork and make inroads for a presidential run, they say. [Politico]

    Pope Francis has overhauled the role of the supreme pontiff, writes E.J. Dionne (@EJDionne). By asserting that questions, not answers, can inspire faith, he combines “a spirit of moderation with intellectual openness and a radical understanding of what the primacy of the spiritual over the material means.” [Foreign Policy]

    What We’re Writing


    Associated Press
    Pro-European Union activists get ready to defend their tent camp on the Independence Square in Kiev, Ukraine, Dec. 9.

    Russia, China Take On Expansionary Roles: While Washington has been obsessing over the shortcomings of a health-care website and debating the virtues of a nuclear deal with Iran, Russia and China have been acting anew like expansionist powers in Europe and Asia, Jerry Seib writes in Capital Journal.




    Sign of the Times

    Minor milestones we’ve spotted:

    The U.S. government sold its remaining shares in General Motors, booking a $10.5 billion loss on its $49.5 billion rescue investment. [WSJ]

    Americans, by a 62% to 39% margin, say Iranian leaders aren’t serious about addressing concerns about their country’s nuclear program. [USA Today]

    Gun-control interest groups have spent five times as much on lobbying expenses in the year since the Sandy Hook shooting than in the year before it. [Sunlight Foundation]

    Although an oft-cited, accurate fact is that only about half of all U.S. workers are covered by a retirement plan on the job, among wage and salary workers (that, is not self-employed) between 21 and 64 who work year-round, make $5,000 or more annually earning and work for an employer with 10 or more staff, 64% of workers have an employer that sponsored a retirement plan in 2012. [EBRI]

    People who were exposed to more than six hours a day of media coverage about the Boston bombing were nine times more likely to seek treatment for acute stress than people who were exposed about one hour per day. [Medical Daily]

    Of 493,000 pianos made worldwide in 2012, nearly four-fifths were manufactured in China. [Economist]

    On average, men live 11.9 years longer than women in Russia, 6.5 years longer in Japan, 4.8 years in the U.S., 3.2 years in India and 1.2 years in South Africa. [BloombergBusinessweek]

    The median rent for a two-bedroom apartment in San Francisco is $3,250 a month, the highest in the country; the median house sells for $850,000. [Economist]
