The Republicans’ proposed cuts to the federal budget are called “deep” in Washington. So deep that Democrat Sen. John Kerry called them terrible, and Illinois Senator Dick Durbin protests that “Republicans are unfairly and unwisely placing the burden of spending cuts on domestic programs. Durbin tells Fox News Sunday he’s ‘willing to see more deficit reduction, but not out of domestic discretionary spending.’”
The Democrats have offered, instead, a shallower set of cuts, of $6.5 billion from domestic spending, hardly a tenth of what the Republicans offer.
But what the Republicans offer is only 5 percent of the budget deficit. Not the budget, mind you, just the Godzilla-sized deficit.
I’m curious where Durbin wants to cut. He’s offered no reduction in domestic “mandatory spending,” which is made up chiefly of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest on the debt. Barring repudiating the debt, where would he attack the budget?
That leaves one huge hunk open for paring down: war spending. But realize that shutting down our entire military, zeroing it out, wouldn’t completely close this deficit. To make substantial Defense Department cuts, we’d have to extricate ourselves from wars abroad or pull our troops out of Europe and Japan and Korea, etc. All things I think we can, should and must do.
Talk is cheap, and awfully vague. “A terrible idea”; “unfairly and unwisely” … as if our current budget mess wasn’t the result of a thousand terrible ideas … and unfair and unwise spending galore.
The Republicans’ proposed cuts are disappointing. The Democrats’ objections? Witless.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
6 replies on “Unkinder Cuts”
I’m sick of the flaying of Social Security. When FDR set up SS, contributions were kept in a sacred trust to pay benefits. Congress stole the money from this “sacred trust” for their pet projects. Once the money was stolen, Congress now cries that SS is a huge debt and benefits must be cut!! I say make the thieves pay it back. Then we would have no SS deficit.
It’s imperative that the Tea Party continue and expand. The people who love this country must stay awake! They put in several very good fiscal conservatives in Congress and some in the Senate. However, they are freshmen and have no power yet. The Tea Party must continue and put more conservatives in our government and continue to purge the pigs that are wallowing in the taxpayer’s previously unbeknownst largess. From both sides of the aisle. It’s not going to happen overnight.
Durbin is a jerk – a typical Dem. Yes, we need more Tea Partiers in government – common folk like the rest of us – instead of Professional Politicians who do things only to protect their jobs. We need more people like Gov. Walker in Wisconsin and I hope to God he does not cave in to the goons sent up their by the “professional community organizer” who tries to pass himself off as a president. I wish we had Gov. Walker in Illinois. Illinois will never follow Wisc. as long as Mr. Wimp Quinn is gov who follows Madigan and Cullterton like a puppy dog. But in four years maybe we can get a GOP gov and we can then join Wisc. and all the other states that have the testicles to stand up for what’s right.
Obama is spending us into a huge hole we are not likely to ever climb out of. Debt is piling up at the rate of $1.5 trillion a year.
That is One Thousand Five Hundred Billion dollars a year, or over Four Billion Dollars a day, every day. That equals Three Million Dollars a minute of OVER spending. every minute of every day. If we cut $61 billion from his budget as proposed, that is about 15 days of OVER spending. Or cutting $100 billion, which the democrats have absolutely refused to go along with, would be 25 days worth of OVER spending.
These figures are not total government spending, just the amount we can’t pay for. Our spending is so out of control I predict a balanced budget is never going to occur again.
The debt and the deficit are only a fraction of what is owed. They only cover what is owed that is interest bearing. The bottom of this iceberg is all of the off the books debt, that the funny numbers accounting elected not to publicize, lest we the payers be out with the proverbial pitchforks.
The un-discussed number, including Social Security, Medicare/caid, federal and state pensions, and state loans is upwards of 135 trillion. More than twice all the money in the world. That is how much these despicable Washingtonians have commited us to repay.
Bernanke has admitted that there is no plan to address this. And unfortunatley it is coming due in the next 8 years. Even inflating the currency 10% a year won’t begin to keep up.
Stock up on nonperishables.
why is the great pretentor still pretending to be pres?