Leaders in Washington want to be congratulated today for avoiding a government shut down.  None are in order. All they did was their jobs, and almost a year late. Every Congress since the nation’s founding has approved an annual budget.

But huge credit is deserved by one leader.  Not for the budget, but for the conversation change he has brought to Washington in very short order.  That is John Boehner, of course, the Republican House leader.

Deficit reduction was a talking point a year ago in Washington. Today it is the main course.  Boehner gets full credit for that, as is pointed out today in Politico.

Last night’s deal to trim federal spending by $38.5 billion will have no effect on the nation’s headlong spiral into insolvency, but the change in attitude in Washington may, and Boehner engineered it.

A year ago, many in Congress – and in the White House – were still talking up massive deficit spending as the cure to our nation’s ills  (a convenient theory to rationalize larger government.) Only Paul Krugmanites are still doing that today, all seven or eight of them.

A majority of Americans want Congress to get real.  And Boehner has become their voice.