It’s good that it’s dawning on the Republican leadership that no one is buying “out year” cuts — we know the only cuts that matter are the ones this Congress makes: it can’t bind future Congresses and nothing it promises on spending cuts in future years means anything.
But the paltriness of the spending cuts is only one-half of the equation that makes the GOP plan so offensive. The other half, of course, is that the spending credit given to President Obama is not only astronomical ($1 trillion and, very soon, another $1.5 trillion) but he gets it all up front — he is not expected to take it in small bits the way we are supposed to get spending cuts.
The reason this makes us recoil is that the spending cuts have been pitched to us as the rationale for agreeing to the debt ceiling increase. I have never bought this reasoning: If the problem is out of control spending, it is absurd to propose extending the spendthrift’s credit card at all; rationalizing an unwarranted credit extension by dollar-for-dollar spending cuts is self-delusion. Since we were only recently running the government on a debt ceiling that was a lot lower than $14.3 trillion, I don’t see why the best course isn’t to tell the President he’s got to figure out how to make it work within that ceiling — something we now know he’s been planning to do, despite all the fear-mongering about default.
But hey, I’m all about compromise. If we have to accept spending cuts in dribs and drabs, why can’t Obama get his debt ceiling increase in dribs and drabs. Giving it to Obama in trillion-dollar tranches helps him since it minimizes the chance that he’ll have to go through this debate again — with America gawking at what he’s spent — before the election. But it doesn’t help us.
Why can’t we propose to increase the debt ceiling as real spending cuts happen? I understand that doing this on a dollar-for-dollar basis may be impractical. But even if we proposed to give him two or three dollars of raised debt ceiling for every dollar of real cuts as the real cuts actually occur, that would be a lot better than the proposals on the table. We’d be able to show we were not unwilling to raise the debt ceiling, but we’d be ensuring that it was raised no more than is necessary to give the government breathing room on pending obligations. It would also keep the focus on spending, and it would force Obama (who claims to be for deficit reduction but hasn’t produced any actual plan) to tell us what he would cut — if he wants the ceiling raises, he’s got to come across with the cuts.
This would be a real compromise. We don’t want to raise the ceiling at all. The principle of matching the ceiling rise to spending cuts has already been generally accepted. What I’m talking about would just insure that there is reality on both sides of the equation: real raises only upon real cuts.
Yes. Exactly right.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe problem with using the debt ceiling as a hard cap on spending is that it forces an extremely violent adjustment to our budget that is liable to cripple the conservative cause politically. We need to wean the country off its spending addiction gradually or the adjustment will be so jarring that everyone will run back to the democrats for more handouts. Our goal has to be to convince the general public that changes are necessary and demonstrate that they can exist without the same level of spending they are accustomed to. An instant 45% cut in everything will just hand the democrats a massive campaign issue.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHear, hear.
"Not wanting to raise the debt ceiling at all" is like "I don't want to have to wear pants and a shirt to work because it's hot out and shorts and a t-shirt are better." It's a nice thought and all, but the consequences are pretty dramatic, such that the "want" is understandable, but foolish in the first place.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNobody's "cutting" a damned thing...not 45%, not 35%, no5 1%. NOTHING.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSpending will still rise no matter whose master plan is adopted.
That's the sickness behind baseline budgeting.
There's really not that much time for weaning. Our goal needs to be to inform the public that there is no more money.
As Turd Ferguson says, "The end of the Great Keynesian Experiment is upon us. Prepare accordingly."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhere did you get the idea that the United States of America has no more money? We have, or at least so far we have, the full faith and credit of the United States, a country with an economic engine of enormous power. We have leveraged that credit to pull the country out of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression.
Once the economy is growing again will be time enough to obsess about the deficit.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAnd by the way, where do folks like you get the idea that Social Security doesn't have a trust fund?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDespite Bush II's efforts to belittle the file drawer at the Social Security headquarters, that file drawer contains Trillion of Dollars of Treasury Bills. Up to now, the safest investment in the entire world, full faith and credit and so forth, look at Section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment . If that is not money in the bank, why do so many people have their safe haven in exactly that investment? Including states, municipalities, foreign governments. Do you believe that the United States will pay them but will not honor the Social Security trust fund T-Bills?
Thanks for the good laugh. I needed that.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHow about this:
$2 trillion increase in debt ceiling in exchange for repeal of base-line budgeting.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDEAL.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWrite it up now.
I'm all for repealing baseline budgeting and making a major issue of it. Hang it around the necks of the Democrats and educate the voters. But why give anything significant away for it?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHow about $2 Trillion to allow drilling in ANWR and lift the drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWe should always have required Obama to pass a budget in order to get a debt ceiling increase.
Give him two budget options:
1) Paul Ryan's budget as written,
or, if he couldn't take the repeal of obamacare required in Ryan's budget, then
2) Ryan's budget without the o'care repeal, but with $300 billion less spending to be taken out of anything other than defense and border enforcement/protection.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMcCarthy nails it. Promises to cut spending in the future have NEVER panned out. Frankly, I'd be happy to see no increase in the debt ceiling, and Obama have to figure out how to make the government scrape by on $200 billion a month.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf John Boehner were a dietician, he would give Michelle Obama a cheesecake to eat today, tell her to eat some spinach tomorrow and then congratulate her for instantly losing 30 lbs.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhy would you use this thread to make fun of the First Lady? Why is that appropriate here?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis debt ceiling has taught me one thing for sure. In the Age of Obama their are 2 types of Republicans, those who want to defeat Obama by being tough, and those who want to defeat Obama by giving in to him. The tough ones are here to defend liberty and economic prosperity, the capitulators are here to defend the Republican leadership from those who wish to defend liberty and economic prosperity.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"the spending credit given to President Obama"
Oh come on. I'm a lifelong conservative who wants Obama out in '12 desperately, but this just isn't fair. It's not honest. It's not how our system works.
Obama isn't a king who's being given authority to spend a trillion dollars. To suggest he is is a lie, and McCarthy knows perfectly well how the federal government works. There are specific spending bills that authorize specific amounts of spending on various things, disallow other kinds of spending, mandate other kinds of spending. The executive has certain discretion in certain areas, as allowed by law.
And then, on top of it all, there's a limit on how much we can borrow. When it's increased, we're not "giving that to Obama." (The only annoying thing about Boehner's approach so far has been how he keeps talking about the limit increase the president is "requesting." As if he could choose not to request it). Obama has been *ordered by the Congress* to spend a certain amount of money. If he were to do what's necessary to stay within the current ceiling -- cut federal outlays by 40% -- he'd be breaking the law. A huge number of suits would be filed against the government arguing, correctly, that it says right there in the law that "the Secretary will spend thus-and-such amount on this-and-that." And the government is willfully not doing it.
The Congress put the President in this situation. Certainly he's handled it terribly, like an upset child, but the fact is that the Congress passed laws to spend the money, and then a different law to collect the money, and then a third law to limit the amount that's borrowed. And these three laws don't add up.
Increasing the limit is not "giving credit" to Barack Obama. How ludicrous a statement. Can he go buy a swimming pool with the money?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis goes right back to the continuing resolution debate earlier this year, which Boehner handled horribly.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"the spending credit given to President Obama"
I did not see your comment DS, until I had the same question for Mr. McCarthy. I agree the entire suggestion is a distortion, completely not conservative in nature, for it isn't honest.
But I disagree with so much of the rest of your offering. Obama's absurd budget called for far more spending increases. It is Obama, Reid, Pelosi, etc., the entire Democratic Party which has made this mess. Not only was their raising spending 5% of GDP completely mindless and destructive, they failed to even pass budgets when they held Majorities. It is they who bear the responsibility.
Republicans have returned some sanity to the entire folly.
Also, the one who responded to you, gets it wrong, Boehner handled the first Gov. Shutdown confrontation quite well, and won a small victory. Politically it was larger than the fiscal payoff, but the likes of Hannity are utterly wrong. They seem stuck in fashion, not studying the actual figures involved, even ignoring the impact of interest on the cut. Boehner and Company, with only one Body in the US Congress, were able to sway the discussion and win a cut. It was a positive.
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