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This is the political scene, a weekly conversation with New Yorker writers and editors about politics.

It's Thursday, December 19th. I'm Dorothy Wickenden, executive editor of The New Yorker.

There actually has been some good political news this year. Senator Patty Murray and Representative

Paul Ryan worked out a budget agreement

that sailed through the House last week and through the Senate this week. Patty Murray told the

News Hour, this is an agreement that Congressman Ryan and I came together on. There are parts of it

that I'm not happy about. There's parts he's not happy about. But that's what compromises take. And we want to show that a democracy can work. Sometimes you have to say, okay, to things you don't really like. Ryan, Lizza and Hendrick Herzberg are here today to lift our spirits as we head into 2014. I feel like we might do some caroling by the end of this. I know, exactly, especially we heard what Petty Murray had to say. So what happened this time, Ryan, with the budget deal? Has the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party been tamed? A little bit, yeah. You think you described it accurately. Ryan, who does have a lot of credibility, especially in the House, among the more radical guys in the House. He has a lot of

credibility, so he was able to sell this deal to most Republicans. It's just unbelievable. What

does a deal include? What it didn't include is the extension of unemployment insurance, which is a

pretty big deal for a lot of people, but they needed the deficit reduction to get some of these

Republican votes. And I think a lot of people think the short-term deficit reduction in the deal really isn't all that important.

So it's two things, that deficit reduction and an easing of the dreaded – I know you hate this word, Dorothy, but sequestration, right?

...