Can we please eat our peas?

What is it with all the food talk in last week's debt ceiling "crisis" debate?

First the president warns us to "eat our peas" in yet another one of his haughty "you are stupid" speeches.

Then, when dinner was served, his faux-pea-loving pals exclaimed:

"Hey! These aren't peas! This is a sugar-coated Satan sandwich!"

Peas?

Satan sandwiches?

Whatever.

Most thinking Americans didn't expect much from this so-called crisis. It was a limited menu, and this president can't cook anyway.

So, let's ditch the food construct for a moment and examine the debt reduction deal as best we know it. It appears to come down to these key points:

-- The debt limit (spending limit, if you will) will be raised by $900 million immediately and by an additional $1.5 trillion by the end of the year.

-- Cuts in spending will mirror the debt limit increases. About $1 trillion of cuts over 10 years will be determined sometime soon with an additional $1.5 trillion in cuts identified by the end of the year.

-- A "super committee" will be formed to make recommendations for the second installment of cuts.

-- If Congress cannot agree on those cuts, automatic cuts will be triggered with all programs on the table, including military spending and Medicare. Social Security, however, is specifically exempt.

From a politically cynical standpoint, President Obama got what he needed out of this deal. He moves the sticky debt "crisis" issue past what promises to be a difficult 2012 re-election campaign.

Almost everything else gets kicked down the road.

Making the initial $1 trillion in cuts to the federal government won't be difficult. A chimp with a green eyeshade could do it, given the wild spending mark already set by the spend-it-all trinity of President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Rep. Nancy Pelosi. The additional $1.5 trillion in cuts between now and the end of the year will be more problematic. And the makeup of the "super committee" will be the key.

Already it has been speculated that anyone who voted against the compromise will not be eligible for appointment to the "super committee."

The Weekly Standard's Stephen F. Hayes says such a move would eliminate some of the Senate GOP's stronger fiscal hawks: Mike Lee, Rand Paul, Jim DeMint, Ron Johnson, Pat Toomey, Jeff Sessions and Marco Rubio. Nevada Sen. Dean Heller also would get blacklisted.

And therein lies the rub.

Democrats will load up the committee with senators who prefer tax increases to spending cuts. They will work overtime to steer the committee in that direction. Some of the best and brightest on the GOP side, meanwhile, will be frozen out of the process, making it easier for Democrats to get their way.

In this way, Obama and Reid maintain hope of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.

If they can get even one dollar of the $1.5 trillion in cuts from the compromise turned into increased taxes, they will have come away a winner in their own eyes. The best way Republicans can make sure that doesn't happen is to load up the "super committee" with strong budget cutters.

In other words, between now and the end of the year, it's going to be same-ol', same-ol' in Washington, D.C. After working for and voting for the "super committee" debt reduction compromise, Sen. Reid some 36 hours later told his home state that "This is the wrong time to be cutting spending," and that the Tea Party "held the country hostage."

How much cutting of government spending can we realistically expect, then, from the president and the Senate majority leader that crafted this "compromise"?

This is the bizzaro universe that is our federal government. We're going to spend more now and promise to cut some unspecific expenditure over the next 10 years.

The president said we have to eat our peas. Would that we could, because it looks like all we're about to get is an empty plate.

Sherman Frederick (sfrederick@reviewjournal.com), the former publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal and a member of the Nevada Newspaper Hall of Fame, writes a column for Stephens Media. Read his blog at www.lvrj.com/blogs/sherm.