The news that President Obama will announce a three-year spending freeze has set off the usual fire storms on both the right and the left.
It’s like the beer commercial for Bud Lite. Too light. Too heavy. Just right.
It’s Too Lite Crowd
Boehner and the boys are screaming that it’s not enough, a measly $250 billion over the decade and they should really be manly men and do something about the entitlement costs exploding the deficit. Uhhmm you mean like healthcare? Even the meek Senate bill was scored by CBO as reducing the deficit by $127 billion over the first decade and $650 over the second and the GOP went ape-do do over that. A more muscular bill with a public option would have dramatically lowered healthcare spending by both the public and private sectors. To my friends and deficit hawks on the right, the only way to stabilize debt to GDP to 60-70% over the next decade is through healthcare spending reductions. Your favorite “do-nothing” iTune will result in long-term mayhem – like seriously freaky fiscal territory of debt to GDP by 300% of GDP by 2050. (The highest was 110% during WWII). So, Dick, deficits do matter. Robert Greenstein, of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities testified in very simple terms (it was for congress) so you can get a primer on our history and future on debts and deficits if you care to face the facts.
But here’s some simpler math: Deficits = Revenues – Expenses
If you don’t think President Obama’s spending freeze of $250 billion is enough, then we have a way bigger hammer on the deficit called the Bush tax cuts. Even the Heritage Foundation concurred that the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts resulted in about $1.8 TRILLION dollars in revenues. Letting them expire would mean that revenues would increase by $4.4 TRILLION dollars over the next decade and now we’re talking serious deficit reduction. (For beginners: The right wingers always say that letting tax cuts sunset, which was their idea in the first place just in case we had a big deficit, is really raising taxes, even if you had to borrow from the taxpayers (because we were running deficits at the time) to pay for it and add lots more interest to the debt. I know it’s kooky logic but you need to know this stuff.
