Obama's Budget Bluff
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Published on
DickMorris.com on February 14, 2011
The Obama Administration and its acolytes on the Bowles-Simpson deficit
reduction commission are propagating the myth that it is Social Security
and Medicare that are driving the deficit over $1.5 trillion.
Discretionary spending, they plead, is but a tiny part of the budget,
not much worth fooling with.
The reality, as we explain
Revolt! -- our new book due out on March 1 – this formulation is a
myth! The fact is that this deficit has been caused by a rapid runup in
discretionary, non-defense spending and in welfare entitlements like
Medicaid and food stamps. The key to cutting spending and slashing the
deficit is not to focus on Social Security or Medicare, but on the real
culprits – discretionary spending and welfare entitlements.
The following chart, taken from
Revolt!, illustrates this key point:
INCREASES IN SPENDING UNDER OBAMA |
Category |
2008 |
2010 |
% Incr |
Welfare |
$260 |
$400 |
54% |
Domestic |
$485 |
$682 |
41% |
Medicare |
$456 |
$528 |
16% |
Social Security |
$612 |
$700 |
14% |
Defense |
$612 |
$690 |
11% |
Source: US Government |
Obama and the Democrats are playing a game (the same one they played in
the 1990s before Bill Clinton called their bluff). By pretending that
the most politically popular programs – Social Security and Medicare --
cause the deficit, they insulate the whole array of less popular
government programs from cuts. They hide appropriations for EPA, PBS,
highway construction, the Department of Education and like behind Social
Security and Medicare reform.
But it is the core spending on the bureaucracy itself that is driving
this deficit, increasing by $200 billion in the two Obama years. And it
is Medicaid and food stamps and other welfare entitlements, up by $140
billion that are also culprits.
In the past two years, we have added 80,000 federal workers, 11 million
food stamp recipients and $50 billion in Medicaid costs under Obama.
When baby boomers start to retire in greater numbers later in the
decade, we will need to focus on Social Security and Medicare, but now
lets cut the core federal discretionary and welfare spending that is at
the root of our burgeoning deficit.
In
Revolt!, we list the very specific budget cuts in discretionary
spending that make the most sense. Here are a few of them:
- Save $30 billion a year by freezing new highway construction for
three years. Keep spending what is needed for maintenance and
safety.
- Save $4 billion by making passengers and airlines pay for
airport improvements rather than using tax money
- Save $4 billion a year by cutting climate research and energy
loan guarantees
- Save $500 million a year by rolling back the cost of Congress to
2008 levels.
- Save $12 billion a year by eliminating Obama’s pork barrel
programs – National Infrastructure Innovation and Finance Fund and
the Build America bonds.
- Save $3 billion a year by a 20% cut in diplomatic missions and
foreign service staff
- Save $12 billion a year by cutting farm subsidies to the largest
ten percent of US farms
- Save $4 billion by tying federal pension COLAs to price
inflation not wage inflation.
- Save $7 billion a year by eliminating Obama’s proposed increases
in the Dept of Education.
- Save $1 billion a year by eliminating the Endowment for the Arts
and the Humanities and ending PBS subsidies.
- Save $5 billion a year by making no new Section 8 rent subsidy
commitments.
Revolt! itemizes many other proposed cuts. It is not hard to bring
the deficit down to less than 4% of GDP by 2014 by cutting discretionary
and welfare entitlement spending.
Its just that liberals don’t want to do it.
ORDER SIGNED ADVANCE COPIES OF REVOLT!
CLICK HERE.
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(c) COPYRIGHT 2011, DICK MORRIS AND EILEEN MCGANN.
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