Contentions The Budget Deal May Collapse

[Valin]

Commentary/Contentions:

John Podhoretz
04.12.2011

The big news today is that the $38.5 billion in budget cuts announced with such fanfare on Friday night mostly aren’t real. A good deal of it involves money from previous years and previous budgets that hasn’t actually been spent. As the AP puts it, the budget deal is

financed with a lot of one-time savings and cuts that officially ‘score’ as savings to pay for spending elsewhere, but that often have little to no actual impact on the deficit…cuts to earmarks, unspent census money, leftover federal construction funding, and $2.5 billion from the most recent renewal of highway programs that can’t be spent because of restrictions set by other legislation. Another $3.5 billion comes from unused spending authority from a program providing health care to children of lower-income families.

The total amount actually cut appears to be $ somewhere between 8 and $14.7 billion.

(Snip)

[Sabre86]

All a sham, big surprise.

[Saltbag]

$100 billion is still a sham, but would have met a promise. If your platform is credibility, being credible goes a long way.

 

So, a relatively insignificant cut in the grand scheme of things makes the house capitulate even though they have complete control of budget. Not inspiring.

[Valin]

All a sham, big surprise.

 

 

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