The most important fact about the debt limit bill was that it would not have passed the House of Representatives without 43 Democratic votes. Actually, 95 Democrats ended supporting the deal to balance the 66 Republicans who refused. The Republican leadership could not decide the issue, nor did Barack Obama or anyone else but the sixty immovable conservative Republicans who refused to sign on to the earlier leadership bill regardless of the consequences. It took 300 Spartans at Thermopylae but only 60 to force the reality even on Democrats that the welfare state was tottering toward bankruptcy and the only solution was to stop the reckless spending.

It was this refusal to budge that convinced President Obama he had to cave and accept a deal without tax increases. Less than a week earlier, the president had gone on national TV and demanded that Congress include additional taxes as part of a “balanced” approach or there would be no deal. He had told a GOP leader “Don’t call my bluff” and that he would keep taking his case “to the American people” until Republicans conceded. A few weeks earlier he had said “I will not accept a deal in which …I am able to keep hundreds of thousands of dollars in income I do not need.” Who could deny the president tax increases when he demanded them even from his own pocket?

Following a Friday news conference President Obama told reporters “I’ve told” the congressional leaders “I want them here at 11 a.m.” Saturday before the Asian markets opened and the international economy fails. Surprisingly the world did not end. Perhaps for the first time since the early 20^th Century when Woodrow Wilson inaugurated the imperial presidency, a Speaker of the House had the courage to speak Constitutional right to presidential power. Backed by the reality that enough Republicans would not bend to presidential pressure, Speaker John Boehner reportedly told the president to his face that it is up to the legislative branch to decide what is in the bills and the president only gets to say yes or no: “Congress writes the laws and you only get to decide what to sign.”

Mr. Boehner learned something himself. Even though he had included much of what the rebel Republicans had demanded in their “Cap, Cut and Balance” program, he could not receive commitments from sufficient Republicans to send his compromise bill to the Senate to set up a final deal. To obtain enough support to pass anything, the Speaker had to add a requirement for a Balanced Budget Constitutional Amendment in order to secure exactly a 218 vote majority. The Senate dispatched that bill on a procedural vote and the grand bargaining began. With a Democratic president and senate, all Washington history guaranteed a “balanced” final bill including Mr. Obama’s bottom line taxes for the “millionaires and billionaires,” or at least for his favorite “corporate jet owners.”

“Miraculously” (as one observer put it) the final deal did not include any tax increase, for anyone, even the president. There had been a tectonic shift in American politics. The precedent was set, as Boehner demanded, that debt limit increases had to be “paid for” by concomitant cuts in spending. The argument that tax increases especially in hard times would delay recovery had been enshrined in law. The most humiliating prospect was that liberal Congressional Democrats had to vote for a bill that violated their every belief. A New York Times editorial called the deal “a nearly complete capitulation to the hostage-taking demands of Republican extremists.” Congressman Emanuel Cleaver called it a “sugar-coated Satan sandwich.” Rep. Jerrold Nadler called it “surrender to Republican extortion.” Still, 94 voted for it. Cong. Louis Gutierrez called them “lunatic proposals” but then said he had to vote for them anyway. It was a new world for Democrats having to face reality that there is no free lunch.

Through it all the sixty Tea Party Republicans stayed firm. They were derided by establishment progressivism and conservatism, both. The Wall Street Journal editors, former presidential nominee John McCain, and several pundits called them “hobbits” for their impracticality. What is unquestionable is that without their “intransience” there would have been a tax increase as part of the deal to raise the debt limit.

Yes, there were problems with the bill. While a vote will be held on a Balanced Budget Constitutional Amendment, it does not have to pass to allow future deficits to increase. There are no required entitlement spending reductions although a joint House/Senate 12 person committee could recommend them to match future deficit increases up to $1.5 trillion. On discretionary spending, a mere $21 billion is cut in 2013 and only $1 trillion is reduced over ten years. Taxes could even be increased by the joint committee but it is unlikely that the required one Republican would agree to such a proposal. If the joint committee recommendations are not adopted, across-the-board discretionary cuts of $1.2 trillion applying equally to domestic and defense discretionary spending are supposed to take place automatically but might be blocked by a coalition of domestic big-spending liberals and defense-hawk conservatives. Finally, most of the “cuts” are from an artificially high “baseline” that guarantees real-world spending will actually increase.

While not much real spending will be reduced, the cynics might be surprised. Much more important, the rest of President Obama’s term will be focused upon spending reductions. President Obama’s big plan for the Budget was rejected by the Senate 97 to zero. There will be no new “transformational” policies, no massive shovel-ready infrastructure projects, no big programs at all. Every government policy will come under review and be questioned. Whatever cuts Republicans propose that are not adopted will go into the Republican platform for the 2012 election. The only other issues will be how to increase jobs and to revive the economy. With spending increases off the table, Democrats will have nothing to say – and face nine percent unemployment and stagnant or negative growth. It is not an enviable position for tooth fairy Democrats facing election in 2012.

Tea Party adherents are said to be disappointed with the results and it is clear the hard work still lies ahead. But their enemies have seen the reality better than they. Ultra-liberal Times commentator Maureen Dowd conceded that the “Tea party crazies” have “changed the entire discussion. They’ve neutralized the White House. They’ve whipped their leadership into submission. They’ve taken taxes and revenue off the table.” She even mused “What if this is all a cruel joke on us [liberals]? What if the people who hate government are good at it and the people who love government are bad at it?” Well, it took a long time but the hobbits and crazies made the liberals look the tooth fairy in the face and realize no one was there.

As lovers of the Constitution, Tea Party conservatives should know real change requires control of both houses of Congress and the presidency. Because of their implacable persistence and adherence to principle they have plugged the dike of expanding government and prepared the way. Liberal columnist Paul Krugman was inadvertently close to the truth when he complained “What Republicans have just gotten away with calls our whole system of government into question.” Future generations will look back on this as the decisive unmasking of the welfare state Oz and honor the 60 for their courage in beginning the journey back to financial sanity and Constitutional government.

Donald Devine was the director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management from 1981 to 1985 under Ronald Reagan and is the editor of ConservativeBattleline Online.