Conservatives won a clear but qualified victory by standing strong for principle and pushing President Obama and Senate Democrats to agree to a spending-cuts-only deal in return for Republicans accepting the biggest single increase ever in the debt limit. While raising the federal government’s debt ceiling used to be a mere formality, a landmark precedent has now been established that added borrowing authority must be accompanied by spending cuts. That said, let’s not pretend that Washington’s spending addiction has been licked. Unfortunately, Obama is doing exactly that in his quest to win a second term in 2012. To hear Obama tell it, “the result would be the lowest level of annual domestic spending since Dwight Eisenhower was president.” If you wonder how such a jaw-dropping claim could be true, it’s not. According to the Obama White House’s own numbers, the Eisenhower administration spent an inflation-adjusted $327 billion on nondefense spending in its last fiscal year, 1961. This year, the Obama administration will spend over $3.7 trillion, more than 40 percent of which will be borrowed from China and others.