Any debt bill must originate in the House. So now what?
On Jul 27, 6:58 pm, MJ <[email protected]> wrote: > Boehner Plan Doesn’t Cut SpendingChris Edwards • July 27, 2011 @ 12:05 pm > House Speaker John Boehner is scrambling to revise his budget plan after the > CBO found that it would only cut spending by $850 billion, not the $1.2 > trillion promised. > However, the Boehner plan doesn’t actually cut spending at all. The chart > shows the discretionary spending caps in the Boehner plan. Spending increases > every yearfrom $1.043 trillion in 2012 to $1,234 trillion in 2021. (This > category of spending excludes the costs of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan). > The “cuts” in the Boehner plan are only cuts from the CBO baseline, which is > an imaginary path of future spending designed as a planning tool for > Congress. Boehner can propose to spend any amount in any future year he > wants, and in this plan he choose to have a steadily rising spending path. > The Boehner plan also doesn’t cut spending in a more fundamental way. It > doesn’t lay out any particular programs or agencies to terminate. I’m in > favor of spending caps as a secondary enforcement mechanism, but actual cuts > have to come first. A caps-only plan like Boehner’s just kicks the can down > the road. At best, it simply nudges future legislators to actually cut > something specific. > Why doesn’t the House leadership propose real cuts? They’ve certainly got the > resources and expertise to do the job. A single senator Tom Coburn produced a > 620-page report last week detailing hundreds of programs to cut and > terminate. Coburn and his staff read through thousands of articles and > reports on the real-world performance of federal programs, and they made a > good case for each particular cut they proposed. > Republican leaders can’t hide behind baselines forever. If they really want a > smaller government as they keep claiming, they’ve got to target particular > programs and agencies and begin a national debate about terminating > them.http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/boehner-plan-doesnt-cut-spending/ -- Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more.
