Surprise, surprise. Even the New York Times is pointing out that President Obama got his historic $2.4 trillion dollar increase in the debt ceiling, in exchange for…barely noticeable spending cuts that will be obliterated by new spending over 10 years (not to mention a bipartisan committee that is likely to recommend the huge tax increases that Obama and the Democrats have been lusting for since time immemorial).
Gee, the House Republicans really drove a hard bargain there, didn’t they?
But remember, conservatives are supposed to be mollified now because Washington is at least talking about spending cuts. Yippee.
WASHINGTON — There is something you should know about the deal to cut federal spending that President Obama signed into law on Tuesday: It does not actually reduce federal spending.
By the end of the 10-year deal, the federal debt would be much larger than it is today.
Indeed, both the government and its debts will continue to grow faster than the American economy, primarily because the new law does not address federal spending on health care.
That is the reason that the ratings agency Standard & Poor’s and its rivals still are threatening to remove the United States from their lists of risk-free borrowers, although the other agencies, Moody’s and Fitch, both said Tuesday that they would watch and wait for now.
It is also the reason that many conservative Republicans refused to vote for the agreement, calling it a grossly inadequate answer to a pressing problem.
“The current deal to raise the debt ceiling doesn’t stop us from going over the fiscal cliff,” Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, wrote Monday in an open letter explaining his opposition. “At best, it slows us from going over it at 80 m.p.h. to going over it at 60 m.p.h..”
This is exactly why Connie Mack’s “Penny Plan” is such a brilliant idea. It offers real, immediate, but manageable cuts to the federal budget – and each year’s budget works off a zero baseline. The plan gets us to a balanced budget in relatively short order (8-10 years) and does so without smoke and mirrors. If you’re not familiar with it, here is the Florida Congressman explaining the plan last week to Sean Hannity. I hope we haven’t heard the end of this.
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