Unlike its predecessors, the thick document did not spark explosions of anger or snorts of derision as it landed on Capitol Hill last week. When Ronald Reagan submitted to Congress his eighth budget, a $1.09 trillion spending package for fiscal 1989, not even the Democrats pronounced it D.O.A., as they have in years past.
Why the sudden bipartisan harmony? Partly because exhaustion and even boredom have taken a toll in seven years of bitter ideological combat; mostly because the battle over this budget has already largely been fought. Reagan's document embodies the compromise deficit-reduction plan forged during the emergency White House-Congress...
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