For most of this year, the brutal cuts to federal spending known as the sequester have wreaked havoc on important programs, cutting off hundreds of thousands from Head Start and low-income housing assistance, setting back scientific research and environmental protection, and costing more than a million jobs. Getting rid of the sequester for domestic programs was a high priority for Congressional Democrats, and they achieved much of what they wanted in a budget deal reached on Tuesday that in other important respects was disappointing.

The deal will cancel 61 percent of the sequester cuts for nondefense discretionary domestic programs this fiscal year, adding back $31.5 billion over the next two years to be divided among departments like transportation, education, and health and human services. That’s a significant achievement, considering that many Republicans want those cuts to continue in perpetuity.

Paul Ryan, the House negotiator, ignored the Tea Party’s insistence that the sequester was untouchable, agreeing to raise discretionary spending in 2014 by $77 billion above his own budget proposal. Patty Murray, the Senate negotiator, resisted Republican demands for new cuts to safety-net programs. As a result, money will soon start flowing to programs that have been starved all year.

But the details of the agreement show that Republican loathing of taxes and domestic spending continue to dominate the budget debate. The full domestic and military sequester should have been eliminated, not just part of it. Even more important, a balanced and fair agreement would have compensated for the new domestic spending with tax increases on the wealthiest Americans by closing unnecessary loopholes. But Mr. Ryan entered the talks with an immovable position that new tax revenue was off the table, forcing negotiators to cobble together more than a dozen other cuts or higher fees to offset new spending.