It can be stunning when we consider sometimes the potential discrepancies between what political leaders promise and what they actually deliver.

While this past week’s hearings with former Department of Justice special counsel Robert Mueller soaked up most of the nation’s media attention, the House quietly passed a bipartisan budget extension that will suspend the debt ceiling for the next two years — well beyond the 2020 election.

The deal, brokered by the White House, allows a $324 billion increase in discretionary spending above the existing budget caps while virtually eliminating the possibility of a government shutdown.

Congress this week begins a six-week summer break. When it returns in September, it will pass spending bills adhering to a new $1.3 trillion spending cap when the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1.

Our representative from Butler, Mike Kelly, R-16th, voted against the measure, and he should be commended for doing so.

“America is driving toward a fiscal cliff and this deal puts more pressure on the gas pedal,” Kelly said of the measure. “While the deal makes necessary investments in America’s military and the VA, Democrats refused to even consider modest reductions in spending elsewhere to offset those costs. As our national debt rapidly approaches $23 trillion without a hint of slowing down, we must acknowledge that this cannot continue forever.”

Truer words have not been spoken. A recent Eagle editorial poked criticism at San Francisco and similar metropolitan areas, which find themselves drowning in the squalor that results from the excessive generosity with OPM — other people’s money — given to individuals who are perfectly capable of earning their own way.

Trump has loudly faulted the freshman Democrat legislators, as well as several Democratic presidential contenders, for championing a “free stuff” socialist agenda while taking their party ideologically far left. But the extended debt ceiling begs a rhetorical question: Is there any real difference between free stuff and an out-of-control credit account?

There is, in theory, one difference: The charge account has to be repaid sooner or later. Apparently that date has been agreed upon as sometime after November 2020.

— TAH