Submitted by: Donald Hank
It’s a good thing I don’t have a baseball bat – or 5-iron – handy around here, or I’d be stimulating the economy buying a new TV this afternoon. The abovementioned clowns are, as I write this, on CNBS and basically everywhere else throwing the old blame game around again – stating that it’s all the Republican’s fault. Well, here’s the reality folks:
- The Democrats have not agreed to actually cut spending. As in right now, today, and in FY 2012 forward. All their alleged “cuts” are to pull defense funding and nothing else, and is predicated on ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which the Democrats said they would do when Obama was inaugurated two years ago and did not. So why should we believe any of those spending reductions will happen now? If you’re going to make them then make them today.
- There are no specifics on discretionary spending cuts. No actual items identified.
- Their final “funny math” is to presume they will get reduced interest payments, which now means they’re presuming they’ll have a 3% 10 year treasury rate for the foreseeable future! Well that’s utter and complete crap. If the economy recovers they won’t have that, and if it doesn’t then they’ll get the rate but won’t get the tax revenues. Either way it’s a lie.
The problem for the Republicans is that they haven’t put forth a credible plan either. They’re not talking about actually cutting spending – they too are talking about trying to jigger military “cuts” down the road along with other funny math. Even “Cut, Cap and Balance” is a scam in that it claims less than $200 billion in actual spending reductions for FY2012 and fails to identify where the actual cuts are going to come from or what baseline is being used. May I remind everyone that the deficit for the calendar year 2010 was $1,700 billion? That is, $200 billion is immaterial and does exactly nothing toward moving the budget toward sustainability – that is, balance. Neither does $2 trillion over ten years which is that same $200 billion. To be credible we need $700 billion in cuts for FY2012 and another $700 billion the next year, with an automatic across-the-board, no-exceptions trigger of 20% out of every program in each case if the Congress fails to perform in either year. Horse trade all you want, but this is what you arrive at – a real $700 billion less in spending for FY2012 than you had in FY2011 inclusive of all supplementals and other gimmicks. Then you have to do it again in FY2013. And yeah, I know this will hit the economy. That’s unavoidable. Tell the truth or get the hell out of town and let some people come into that cesspool called “Washington DC” that both can and will. |
No comments:
Post a Comment