$38 Billion In Cuts? Make That $353 Million

Well well well, seems like the crooks that negotiated this budget deal are being exposed, with about 24 hours until the deal is debated.

I previously posted that the budget deal was exposed as only cutting between $8 and $14 billion from the deficit through fancy accounting tricks - which had already enraged both sides of the political spectrum.

It seems as though the cuts are significantly smaller than that, according to The Washington Post:

A new budget estimate released Wednesday says that the spending bill negotiated between President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner would produce less than 1 percent of the $38 billion in claimed savings by the end of this budget year.

The Congressional Budget Office estimate shows that the spending bill due for a House vote Thursday would pare just $352 million from the deficit through Sept. 30. About $8 billion in cuts to domestic programs and foreign aid are offset by nearly equal increases in defense spending.

The House began debate on the measure Wednesday with a test vote slated for the early afternoon. The measure appears on track to pass the House and Senate this week before a stopgap spending measure expires Friday at midnight despite opposition from some of the GOP’s most ardent budget cutters.

The budget deficit is projected at $1.6 trillion this year.

The CBO study confirms that the measure trims $38 billion in new spending authority, but says many of the cuts come in slow-spending accounts like water-and-sewer grants that don’t have an immediate deficit impact.

...

Republicans say they wish the measure would cut more but that the cuts negotiated by Boehner are about as good as can be expected giver that Democrats hold the Senate and the White House. In his February budget, Obama pressed a freeze on domestic agency accounts.

“We continue to push this president to places he never said he would go,” said House GOP Whip Kevin McCarthy of California. “The president said he would freeze spending. Our Speaker negotiated, outnumbered 3-1. We have cut spending.”

At this rate, the deal might not pass, meaning the government shutdown has definitely not been averted.

The US warmachine, as has long been said, is hugely overfunded - making up for any cuts to social spending (and then some). The average person becomes worse off, while the military-industrial complex picks their pockets for unpopular and hugely controversial imperialist missions.

Be sure to watch the staged wrestling match tomorrow, it's bound to be entertaining... And likely a bit sad.

Yep you beat me to it.

I sure hope this is brought up in the debate tomorrow in the House before they go to vote on it. But I doubt it

I'm tired of being continually lied to by OUR congress.

reply to post by pforkp


I tried to read you're thread but all I could do was stare at your avatar......

But seriously.. what do we expect? Congress to actually do something? !%$! the Republicans, !%!% the Democrats.. if we want to save this country we need to suspend Congress for the next 10 years.

I found this part to be pretty interesting in the Article

The budget deficit is projected at $1.6 trillion this year.

Didn´t Obama just "promise" to cut the Defictit by $4 Trillion over the next 12 Years?

Wouldn't matter what sort of deal Obama agreed to, the Ryan budget proposal was turning out to be a joke anyways - it contained nearly as much in tax giveaways to wealthy corporations as it proposed to cut from social programs and medicaid. Ryan's proposal was therefore never about balancing any budget, they just wanted to change who got what from the government.

Paul Ryan’s budget: unnecessary pain with no long-term gain (www.epi.org)

Smoking mirrors. That whole fiasco leading up to the proposed government shutdown was nothing more than a Washington style parlor game. They carefully concocted a crisis, each side did their utmost to pour on the controversy and drama leading up to zero hour, and at the last minute a miraculous solution was made. Just more of the two sides against the middle by the Republican and Democratic parties. Each side got something out of it. The President got to strengthen his new political persona of being a moderate through his role as the benevolent mediator, the Democrats got to show that they are the champions of special interests and entitlement programs by not caving into the Republican's calls for cuts, and even the Republicans can claim they held the line as long as possible to get their cuts, and proved they are willing to compromise to avert crisis. It was a win win for all involved.

As the OP points out with the article, the budget cut agreement was much to do about nothing. Furthermore, it is not even a trickle in the bucket to arrest the catastrophic deficit spending taking place by the US government. As they waste time, going back and forth about this and that; the deficit continues to get bigger and bigger. When everything is said and done, the joke will not be on them but will be on the American people for not calling them out when they try to make a political game out of the grievous national security liability which is the ever growing deficit spending and debt.

Right now, the national debt is at 14.2 trillion dollars, and will continue to grow. Moreover, the the yearly federal deficit is just as appalling as the national debt.

Both parties helped run up US $14 trillion debt

The deficit is the difference between what the government spends in a given year and what it takes in. In the budget year that ends Sept. 30, the deficit is expected to be a record $1.5 trillion. At that level, for every $1 the government spends, it must borrow about 42 cents.

As far as I am concerned, they ought to be locked up in the legislature and no one will leave until a robust budget is made to curb reckless spending, cut any unnecessary dead weight in the federal budget, and most importantly cap the mammoth deficit. The games have got to stop, and it is time for them to make the tough decisions that their office and the American people expect of them!

It really is disgusting, I guess they think that getting the budget under control is just a joke. Maybe they all really know it's too late to avoid a monstrous economic collapse, so they are just going through the motions, only thing that makes logical sense to me.

The situation is getting very serious. Japan won't be buying anymore of our bonds due to the cost of rebuilding, China has announced they don't really want any more of our debt, the worlds largest bond fund is now shorting our bonds, and QE2 (the FED buying bonds with printed money) runs out in June. Who in the heck is going to still be buying our debt? In case you didn't know that is the 1,2 and 3 owners of US debt in the world and they all don't want any more - in the case of Japan they may very well want to sell what they have, further depressing the market. TSHTF moment is likely just a few months away and this is the way congress reacts?

If we can't sell our debt, all this bickering means nothing, it will mean instance cuts of 45% of the budget.

You'll never have a meaningful budget that reduces the deficit unless you cut the defense budget, and significantly. That was another failing of the Ryan budget, it actually gave a modest boost in defense spending.

England made the tough decision when it went through it's budget crisis, and they wisely chose to cut their defense spending a good amount, along with cutting social and education budgets.

Only in the USA would we gut education and social programs while increasing military and defense programs. That didn't work out so good for the Soviets, and it won't work for us.