The past week has been a nothing if not confusing… From the President talking about his plan which mysteriously no one ever saw to John Boehner fighting off an attack from Tea Party “Hobbits” because they said his plan was almost interchangeable with Harry Reid’s. As of Sunday night the Boehner, Reid, Obama triad had cobbled together something that “cuts” federal spending by $2.4 trillion while raising the debt ceiling by about the same. Finally! Some clarity that makes this mess easy to understand for we simpletons…
Not so fast… Just a quick question… if federal spending is going to be cut by $2.4 trillion, why do we need a debt limit increase? In 2012 the federal government is expected to take in $2.2 trillion in taxes yet spend $3.7 trillion, $1.5 trillion more. Well, if you take $2.4 trillion in spending cuts out of a $3.7 trillion budget, you should have expenditures of only $1.3 trillion. That must mean that taxpayers should be getting $900 billion of the $2.2 trillion they will be paying in taxes back. Stupendous! Imagine, when people work together there is no limit to what they can accomplish.
Don’t spend that refund check just quite yet… Unfortunately, real numbers and accounting clarity are not Washington’s strong suit. The $2.4 trillion in savings doesn’t come from next year at all. It comes out of the projected INCREASE in federal spending over the next ten years. So, not only is this magical $2.4 trillion cut not come out of actual spending, it isn’t even cutting all of the expected deficits over the next decade.
Let’s see if I can explain this. The Congressional Budget Office has what they call the Baseline. That Baseline is basically what would happen over the next decade given current projections of spending and tax revenues. According to its January 2011 estimate, the CBO predicts that Uncle Sam will run a total deficit over the next decade of $7 trillion, or an average of $700 billion a year. Wow, $700 billion in deficits a year for a decade! Tax revenues must be expected to fall off of a cliff… Actually, no. They are expected to more than double to about $5 trillion in 2021 from $2.2 trillion this year. Unfortunately however, by 2021 the federal expenditures are expected to grow to $5.7 trillion from today’s $3.7 trillion.
According to Washington math, if the federal government decided to simply stop growing today, and spend only $3.7 trillion a year (which is what they will spend in 2011) for the next decade, that would be a $9 trillion spending cut. ($37 trillion in outlays vs. the CBO’s current $46 trillion projections.) Only in Washington can you spend the exact amount of money yet pat yourself on the back for cutting spending. And there is a bonus. If they were actually to do that, the federal books would go from a $7 trillion deficit to a $2 trillion surplus.
And just to put this in a bit more perspective, freezing at current levels would be enshrining the ludicrously high annual outlays that Barack Obama put in place – up from $3.1 trillion two years ago, which itself is up from $1.8 trillion when George Bush became president. In 2000, the United States had a population of almost 300 million people and a federal budget of $1.8 trillion. By 2011, while the population had grown 3% to 311 million people, the federal budget had grown by over 100% to $3.7 trillion. By 2021 the population is expected to grow by 9% to approximately 340 million people. The federal budget however is projected to grow 65% to $5.7 trillion. So in a period of a mere two decades federal spending will have grown from approximately $6,000 per person in the United States to $16,700 per person.
Let that sink in. By 2021 the federal government will be spending $16,700 for every man, woman and child in the country. They will also be collecting $14,300 for every person in taxes to pay for it and borrowing another $2,000. We’re almost there. How do things feel so far?
That’s exactly what the Tea Party congressmen were fighting against when they were pilloried by the Wall Street Journal, Bill Krystal and John McCain. They don’t want faux cuts that make for nice headlines but do nothing to rein in spending and begin to put the country’s fiscal house in order. They are not even talking about rolling expenditures back to what they were when Barack Obama took office, not to mention the glory days when Bill Clinton left us with a surplus driven by a “Peace Dividend”. No, they are simply talking about freezing spending where it is today and cutting the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste to finance the growth in critical programs.
Washington exists in a universe all by itself and it’s comfortable playing with make believe numbers and budgets. Unfortunately however the people who have to pay the very real bills for such chicanery can’t get by with make believe numbers and promises. The Tea Party nation recognizes that and sent a message to Washington in November to stop the tomfoolery. This budget deal demonstrates clearly that they didn’t get the message. One election however is rarely sufficient to clean out all of the deadwood from a rotting foundation. Keep that in mind the next time you hear some career politician or someone in the media wringing their hands about those Tea Party “Hobbits” who refuse to get on board and do things the way Washington has always done them. Hopefully after the 2012 election Washington will start looking a lot more like Middle-earth.
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A most excellent summary, Vince. Thank you! Along those lines, here’s a small part of a brilliant essay from a PowerLine reader which should be widely circulated: Abraham Lincoln on the Debt
This man, John Long, understands the greater issues.
Man did the Republicans hood-wink their voters. Betrayal is the word that best fits what happend.
But don’t worry! Flopping Aces will continue to hammer Obama with no let-up!!!
I told you people a thousand times: the knife in the front is preferable to the knife in the back.
Now do you get it?
Excellent points, too bad you will never get a serious answer from the bozos in charge. It is just too easy to spend (or tax) OPM, now what would be fare is if they reduce Medicare, Medicaid, SS, Welfare by the same percentage that they raise taxes, then everyone shares in the sacrifice…that would also be equal treatment under the law.
@Ivan:
That really is a stupid statement, Ivan. Either way, you get stabbed.
And to include ALL Republicans under one umbrella, is disingenuous, and misleading.
It is time to take the next step.
Every state has an EPA. As does the Federal Govt.
There is no state that is unable to support their EPA.
Close the Federal EPA regulations and all.
This whole thing infuriates me. The Republicans were supposed to hold the line. They didn’t and we all know it. You can call this compromise, but why is it it’s only compromise when the liberals get what they want? It’s terrorism when the Tea Party even asks for something!
2012 is right around the corner – we warned the waffling Rinos – so make your vote count!
Tibby,
As I have always said, “compromising with a bad plan is the same as agreeing to said bad plan…” Using Dumbo’s example, how do you compromise with driving the car off the cliff…stop half-way down to the canyon floor? Sometimes “hell no!” is the proper response, and a compromise with insanity only means that you are partially insane.
@johngalt:
No, not really. I guess you don’t understand concepts such as “Loyal opposition” and “betrayal”. You’re cool with either one.
Yeah man, you can continue to believe in the “Two-Party-dog-and-pony-show” mentality all you want. The rest of the US has woken up to the scam.
Tell you what, I’ll change the statement to make you happy: We were betrayed by the Republicans THAT MATTER.
There, happy?
@Ivan:
That’s not it, Ivan. I was speaking in general. Getting stabbed hurts, and can be potentially fatal, no matter where the stabbing happens, so neither is “preferable”, in any circumstance, and hence, my labeling of your statement as stupid.
Where did I ever say anything like that? I realize, as do many, probably most, others here, that neither “Party” represents us all that well in DC, the individual states, and even locally(although you have a better chance here than the other two). The fact that you believe there is no one, within either party, that actually does have our best interests at heart, is fine. I don’t go in for that myself, and believe there are some good politicians who look out for others before themselves. However, while I believe that, I am not naive enough to think that either party, in this case the GOP, is my “friend” in politics, anymore than the party of Obama is.
Try reading some of my more recent posts before you go attributing something to me that isn’t true, Ivan. And, just because someone rants on Obama and his policies, or that of the Democrats in Congress, doesn’t mean that that person is fully supportive of the GOP. That is your mistake here, Ivan. You assume something that isn’t true, and thus, make those stupid comments.
Doesn’t make me happy or unhappy. It’s your comment. However, that statement is very accurate concerning this whole debt ceiling discussion. We conservatives were betrayed by the party most closely associated with conservatism, mainly because the people in leadership positions within the GOP capitulated to Obama and the Dems. As one of my favorite authors stated, in any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. The GOP “compromised” with the Democrats and Obama, and the question isn’t IF the system will collapse(death), but only a matter of WHEN.
We, here, realize this, Ivan. Your problem is that you don’t recognize that we do. So you go and assume things about us that are not accurate, in part or in whole. And that is where you fail here, Ivan. You attack conservatives here based on your wrong assumptions of us, and then act like you are better than everyone else because of those wrong assumptions. It’s no wonder people see you the way that they do.
@johngalt: @johngalt:
The fact you’re outraged over my outrage over the Republican leadership betraying us tells me all I need to know about you and your lack of intellectual honesty.
Have a good day, John.
I see the phony Conservative Ivan is at it again. Folks, he is someone pretending to be an “Archie Bunker Conseravtive” in order to cause trouble here.
Until we called him on it, he never criticized the dems for anything and made it a point to attack the GOP at every turn. He comes to a Conservative leaning site to attack the GOP. Think about that. Heck, just the other day he claimed Germany got out of their depression before the U.S. due to massive govt. spending on social programs. Yet he wants to pretend he’s more right wing than others here? He’s a fraud. Don’t waste your time with him.
@Ivan:
No, I am not “outraged”(not really, but I’ll use your words) over your outrage at the Republican leadership betraying anyone. I am “outraged” at your assumptions that we, conservatives, are not outraged by it. As I said, go back and read my comments on this, and the comments of others, in any posted article dealing with the debt ceiling issue. Then come back and tell us how we aren’t outraged at the GOP leadership.
And intellectual honesty? I have it, as do many others here. The fact that you make wrong assumptions of others here, continuously, shows that you have very little, if any at all, intellectual honesty.
@Hard Right:
I really should take your advice, HR. However, I couldn’t get past his comment that one type of stab wound from a knife is preferable over another.
The important fact ,in all of this is still to not sway out of the focus we must return too,
even if it hurt, that is the defeat of the DEMOCRATS IN 2012, BEFORE ATTACKING ANY ONE ELSE
we must keep a cool head all the time till 2012 election,
the opposition are the DEMOCRATS and we must not engage in other games to jeopardizes the goal.
which is the end win all, the rest will take his rank as the time progress, but is the number 2,after the number one only.
there will be agent to try to divert the focus and more and more but we will not play their games.
johngalt hi,
now the street mugger, with a knife, will appeoch the person, asking them front or back,,
instead of give me you’re frick,
@johngalt:
I hear you. Sometimes it’s hard not to take a swing at a meatball pitch thrown by an even bigger meatball.
Ever since McCain called Tea Party advocates “Hobbits” I’ve been waiting for someone to state the obvious. Since no one has, I will. Only the Hobbits were entrusted to do the right thing with the ring of power so the world would not become enslaved in the darkness of dictatorship and totalitarianism.
@toothfairy – I thought the same thing. I’ll take being a hobbit over the orcs any day. America is my Shire.
I wish, I could have read that book.,
my sister read it a long time ago and really liked it at the time.
I’ll be trying to find it like many other which got the urge to read it now
JOHN MCAIN READ IT AND INTERPRETED HIS WAY, OF COURSE
HE IS PART OF THE DARKNESS. ALONG WITH THE DEMOCRATS
Doubt that he read it, if he had he’d know hobbit’s were the heroes,
Traditional Tibby,
yes, that is their big blunder ,now is in it , and a stupid one too,
they must be biting their tongue now
bye