It includes no new funding for Obamacare. It prohibits the transfer or release of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba into the United States, meaning no civilian trials. It blocks funding of the risk corridors that, under the Affordable Care Act, could lead to a government bailout of the insurance companies. It maintains all the existing pro-life policy and funding provisions and adds three more while cutting the funds for the Independent Payment Advisory Board (which is the body that would be recommending any rationing of health care) by $10 million.

The bill also cuts funding for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency by $60 million, which is the fifth consecutive year the agency's budget has been cut and may finally convince the bureaucrats who run the place they cannot go beyond what they are legally authorized to do without congressional approval. And it hits the Internal Revenue Service particularly hard, cutting its allocation of federal dollars by $345.6 million, prohibiting it from targeting organizations because of the way they chose to exercise their First Amendment rights or on an ideological basis, punishes it for its profligate abuse of taxpayer dollars on expensive, needless videos and conferences at luxury resorts, and prohibits the White House from ordering the review of any organization's tax exempt status.

There's more, but the general drift of the thing is toward smaller, leaner, more transparent, more honest government than has been the case over the last six years. [...]

The other piece of what turns out to be an exceptionally intricate puzzle is that by funding almost all of the government through the end of fiscal year 2015, the new Congress can focus on the spending plan for the following year. The new majority is free to turn its thoughts, focus and energy toward the future without having to split its time doing work that should already have been done. It opens the door to the creation of an agenda for spending (and for tax reform) that builds on where things are already headed under Ryan-Murray