Saturday, December 29, 2012
Cuts Shmutts/Podesta Lies
Washington is strange place. Only there would a person even attempt to call adjustments to the rate of growth of spending "budget cuts" - and savage ones, no less. It's a dirty little secret that they have and they call it baseline budgeting.........................................................................................So, yes, even with the supposedly "draconian cuts" of the Ryan budget, the vast, VAST, percentage of those (yes, there are some actual cuts in the first year of it but after that the budget grows approximately 40% over the next 11 years) are basically slowdowns in the rate of projected growth.........................................................................................And why do the nummies do it this way, you ask? I don't know, probably for several reasons. a) Bureaucrats and politicians love power (and wealth) and what better way to consolidate it than to remove it from the private sector and b) it also provides multiple opportunities to demagogue. Take, for instance, this quote from the Center for American Progress's John Podesta - "Closing the budget gap entirely on the spending side would require draconian cuts - cuts that would affect Americans' everyday lives, threaten the fundamentals of our health and safety, and reduce investment in science and technology, which undergird innovation in our economy." It's utter nonsense (and, yes, I could come up with a conservative counterpart regarding defense spending), in that as I plainly pointed out in a previous post, we don't even have to cut (real cuts, I'm saying) spending in order to balance the budget in the short term (10-12 years). We just have to keep the growth of it to 2.5% and it'll balance itself!! Enough already with the BS, you slugs.
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They're just trying to rationalize wealth transfers and more money for the public education racket. If you're going to spend more on education, at least put the money in the right place like with engineering and STEM programs and other things that actually contribute to economic and GDP growth. I wouldn't mind such a proposal as much if they just spent it properly.
I saw an article on The Daily Beast regarding a possible milk cliff that will take place if the GOP and the Democrats don't come to a consensus before 2013.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/12/29/the-milk-cliff-explained-why-a-gallon-may-soon-hit-7.html
This is one of those times where limited government intervention would be seriously helpful and letting the market forces do their thing. It's not a difficult concept to grasp.
Even the Huffington Post had a story on how Obama is basically ordering pay raises for his staff. Unbelievable. I am convinced now that all this man speaks of is mere rhetoric and is just using the American people as a way to express his egghead narcissism.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/28/obama-pay-raise-congress_n_2377714.html?utm_hp_ref=politics
" we don't even have to cut (real cuts, I'm saying) spending in order to balance the budget in the short term (10-12 years). We just have to keep the growth of it to 2.5% and it'll balance itself!!
Relative to 2009, we spending growth through 2012 is approximately 1.8% per year. Looks like we are already on track.
Roberto, as usual, I agree. The federal government has increased the education budget by massive numbers (both under Bush and Obama) and the end result just keeps getting worse. I say let parents have a choice as to where they send their kids and, yes, break up the public school monopoly once and for all.
Here are the numbers that I have, Jerry. 2009 total expenditures = $3.518 trillion, 2012 expenditures = 3.796 trillion, for a growth of .278 trillion over 3 years. That's a 7.9% increase over 3 years and so a 2.6% growth rate. Not bad but I think that if you look at the out years with the growth in projected spending it will probably supercede that greatly.
We have the same numbers. I just messed up my arithmetic. But the fact is that it will not take big changes to balance the budget in 10 - 12 years.
We agree, as long as we can retain this modest growth of spending into the future.
That's one reason we need to go back to PayGo that worked so well during the Clinton years.
Clinton, prodded by a Republican congress (from 1994-1998 the rate of growth of domestic spending was limited to 2.9% a year).
PayGo ultimately makes sense.
That includes future conflicts we will undoubtedly find ourselves involved in to keep the MIC flush.
I fear that people like McCain and Graham are going to try to shame Obama into getting involved in Syria and that he may in fact take the bait. Hopefully, I'm wrong.
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