Where Are The Spending Going To Come From?
Where air pollutants come from - According to industry
Where did the values and principles of the modern world come from?
"jake wand" going to the track with Ducati Desmosedici 16RR from movie "The Expendables"
India is going to the Dogs
Post-election, Republicans are announcing their intentions for a limited government. They promise spending cuts which will usher in a new era of small government. So after eight years of embracing George Bush's novel idea of 'Big Government Conservatism' (his philosophy) and a Republican Congress passing the largest entitlement act, unfunded to boot, since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society (Medicare Part D), they put on a serious face and promise genuine spending cuts.
Let's take their words and appreciate if they really intend to cut spending in any significant manner. There are two types of spending in a federal budget currently at $3.6trillion or roughly a quarter of GDP: discretionary or mandatory spending. The latter is spending which "is on automatic pilot and whose level depends on how many people become eligible for Social Security, Medicare, and food stamps [ect...]." This spending increases unless Congress bucks it. Discretionary spending is "explicitly authorized each year" and this constitutes, say, the budgets for federal departments/agencies and defense spending. Republicans have already stated they will not touch entitlement spending. That's amusing. They claim to want to cut spending but 56% of the budget, that which is entitlement spending, is off-limits:
The Republicans then add that we can never be so unpatriotic to cut defense spending even though we already spend half of all international defense spending, have no formidable enemies and a lot of defense spending is pure waste authorized by Congress for jobs' purposes only. None other than the incoming tanned Republican Speaker of the House, who promises small government, continually authorizes defense spending for a spare engine in a fighter jet. Why would the Pentagon need a spare engine for every fighter jet? They don't and have requested that such sales cease. But the factory producing the spare is...just outside the new Speaker's district and employs many of his constituents. That seals the deal and shows the hollowness of Republican fiscal conservative rhetoric. So defense spending is simply beyond reproach. Add another 23% to the 56% and 79% of the federal budget is off-limits to any discussion of cuts. Then there's the interest payments. No Congress is about to cut interest payments on debt and destroy American credit standing. So an additional 5% is not debatable, and this is truly not debatable, and 84% of the budget will not be cut. President Bush authorized TARP and the Republicans, backed by Wall Street, are not planning, nor have they ever said they will, cancel what's left of trap. That brings us to 88% of the budget not going to be cut. Let's see the graph again:
So there you have it Tea Party. 12% of the budget is yours to chip away at. And do you really expect Republicans to cut all farm and corporate subsidies? What about money for education? American R&D grants? But don't be depressed: You may get enough cuts to measure more than a rounding error in a budget on the side of $4trillion. Knock yourself out!
