Guest
08-01-2011, 05:09 PM
Let's put this whole "deal" in perspective. The partisans in Congress argued and wrangled for months to arrive at where we are tonight. They're both saying it must be a good deal because neither side nor the President likes it. Well, maybe we should take a look at it without the assistance of their soundbites.
There's a lot of detail that will be revealed when the bill is actually written, but here's what seems to be the case right now. The objectives of the liberals was to protect the entitlement programs from inclusion in any spending cuts. The conservatives wanted "cut, cap and balance" as well as to protect the defense department budget. The President wanted any further Congressional negotiation on spending to be put off until after the 2012 election. How'd they do?
The President seems to have gotten what he wanted--not to have to endure this budget/spending debate/negotiation again until after nthe 2012 election.
It looks to me like the liberals got pretty much what they wanted. Forget the moaning and groaning that you'll hear--Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid went untouched!
What did the conservatives get? Everyone is saying that the GOP was the big winner in these interminable negotiations, but were they really?
Did federal spending get cut? That remains to be seen, I think. In the best case, the agreement says that spending will be cut by $2.4 trillion. Did the GOP get a "cap"? Not in any writeup I've seen so far. And "balance" (as in a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution)...surely you jest. Let's take a closer look at what the GOP did get--$2.4 trillion in spending cuts.
Federal spending totaled just a tad shy of $3.9 trillion in FY2011. If that number were capped--but I see no mention of an agreed upon cap in any of the writeups on the agreement--that means that over the next ten years the government would spend $39 trillion. That's the baseline from which the cuts will be taken.
So how aggressive was our Congress in getting federal spending under control? They agreed to cut $2.4 trillion from expenditures of $39 trillion--a cut of a measly 6.15%. Ask yourself--if a private company was in the financial trouble that the U.S. is in, would a cut of a little more than 6% be what you'd expect? Are those the kinds of cuts that companies have experienced in the last couple of years?
I read an article in The Wall Street Journal today saying that HSBC (Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corp.), the largest bank in the world, is terminating 30,000 of it's 300,000 employees worldwide. And HSBC is not even as threatened financially as the United States. My son works for Ford. He had to cut his department by fifty percent, with no change in the work to be done!
There's no mention of a cap on the federal budget anywhere in the agreed-upon deal. Does that mean that the Congress could cut $2.4 trillion of yet-to-be-identified items but still add spending for other new programs? I guess we'll see.
So lets listen to what the politicians, particularly the Republicans, say about the spending cuts in this bill. I'm guessing you'll hear words like "significant spending cuts" and "changed the nature of the debate". But in fact, if the Congress actually cuts $2.4 trillion--and that's a really big IF--it will only amount to a measly 6% cut of federal spending. With nothing more than the cuts agreed to in the latest "deal" in Congress, we will still almost double the amount of the national debt in the next ten years.
Maybe the only person who said something meaningful after the deal was agreed to was President Obama, and I'm not certain he really meant what he said when he opined, "....this is a good downpayment on moving towards fiscal responsibility."
"Downpayment" indeed--and not a very big one!
There's a lot of detail that will be revealed when the bill is actually written, but here's what seems to be the case right now. The objectives of the liberals was to protect the entitlement programs from inclusion in any spending cuts. The conservatives wanted "cut, cap and balance" as well as to protect the defense department budget. The President wanted any further Congressional negotiation on spending to be put off until after the 2012 election. How'd they do?
The President seems to have gotten what he wanted--not to have to endure this budget/spending debate/negotiation again until after nthe 2012 election.
It looks to me like the liberals got pretty much what they wanted. Forget the moaning and groaning that you'll hear--Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid went untouched!
What did the conservatives get? Everyone is saying that the GOP was the big winner in these interminable negotiations, but were they really?
Did federal spending get cut? That remains to be seen, I think. In the best case, the agreement says that spending will be cut by $2.4 trillion. Did the GOP get a "cap"? Not in any writeup I've seen so far. And "balance" (as in a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution)...surely you jest. Let's take a closer look at what the GOP did get--$2.4 trillion in spending cuts.
Federal spending totaled just a tad shy of $3.9 trillion in FY2011. If that number were capped--but I see no mention of an agreed upon cap in any of the writeups on the agreement--that means that over the next ten years the government would spend $39 trillion. That's the baseline from which the cuts will be taken.
So how aggressive was our Congress in getting federal spending under control? They agreed to cut $2.4 trillion from expenditures of $39 trillion--a cut of a measly 6.15%. Ask yourself--if a private company was in the financial trouble that the U.S. is in, would a cut of a little more than 6% be what you'd expect? Are those the kinds of cuts that companies have experienced in the last couple of years?
I read an article in The Wall Street Journal today saying that HSBC (Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corp.), the largest bank in the world, is terminating 30,000 of it's 300,000 employees worldwide. And HSBC is not even as threatened financially as the United States. My son works for Ford. He had to cut his department by fifty percent, with no change in the work to be done!
There's no mention of a cap on the federal budget anywhere in the agreed-upon deal. Does that mean that the Congress could cut $2.4 trillion of yet-to-be-identified items but still add spending for other new programs? I guess we'll see.
So lets listen to what the politicians, particularly the Republicans, say about the spending cuts in this bill. I'm guessing you'll hear words like "significant spending cuts" and "changed the nature of the debate". But in fact, if the Congress actually cuts $2.4 trillion--and that's a really big IF--it will only amount to a measly 6% cut of federal spending. With nothing more than the cuts agreed to in the latest "deal" in Congress, we will still almost double the amount of the national debt in the next ten years.
Maybe the only person who said something meaningful after the deal was agreed to was President Obama, and I'm not certain he really meant what he said when he opined, "....this is a good downpayment on moving towards fiscal responsibility."
"Downpayment" indeed--and not a very big one!