tangent4ronpaul
01-22-2011, 01:20 PM
here's the kicker - non-mandatory, non-defense (which they have re-phrased to non-security, so all that police state on steroids spending is off limits too).
How much money are we talking about here? Well, here's the 2010 budget:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budget
Total budget: $3.55 Trillion (actually $3.900+ Trillion in spending)
Mandatory Spending: $2.47 Trillion (SS, Medicare, Medicaid, Interest, etc)
Department of Defense: $964 Billion
Department of Homeland Security: $43 Billion
That leaves us with $73 Billion on the table that we are going to "roll back" to pre 2008 spending levels. Well, wait - couple of gottcha's here: Some Department of Justice, and Department of energy spending is hands off (security and maintaining nukes). Also, while the budget was $3.55 Trillion, the government spent almost $4 Trillion.
Lets look at this just from the perspective of discretionary spending:
2010: 1.368 Trillion. After removing defense spending that leaves ~$368 Billion.
Numbers for 2007 Discretionary spending are a bit hard to find, but I did find this chart for 2007 non-defense discretionary spending:
http://perotcharts.com/2008/05/non-defense-discretionary-spending-in-2007/
that says the number was $493 Billion
So the Repubs want to cut non-defense discretionary spending from it's 2010 levels of $368 Billion to it's 2007 level of $493 Billion resulting in a total savings of NEGATIVE -$128 Billion!!!! (before things like aid to Israel, DoJ and the parts of police state funding that have been shoved off onto just about every other agency of the federal gvmt are protected from cuts).
That can't be right. Well, the Budget committee is arguing that it would cut 1 in 6 non-defense discretionary dollars. From 2010 levels, that would mean a savings of $168 Billion total. Or roughly what Congress spends every 2 weeks. WOW! - I'm soooo impressed! - NOT!
That 2.5 Trillion over 10 years in cuts ($250 Billion a year) looks better. At this rate, we could pay off the deficit in 56 years, before factoring in interest. Except that no one is talking about paying off a penny of the debt.
What is most disconcerting is they want to pass this resolution before they have firm numbers and leave what is cut up to one committee chairman. Does this sound familiar? Maybe like "you have to pass it to find out what's in it" Pelosi and a bunch of non-accountable, appointed bureaucrats doing the fine grain that we have to live with?
Has anything changed? Did Congress get the memo that we wanted serious reform and not an endless series of dog and pony shows?
When you think about it, this country could be in the black again in 4-5 years if it axed the regulatory agencies, brought our military back home and downsized everything in the government to Constitutional levels, while still keeping social security, medicare and medicaid.
Pure insanity!
-t
How much money are we talking about here? Well, here's the 2010 budget:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budget
Total budget: $3.55 Trillion (actually $3.900+ Trillion in spending)
Mandatory Spending: $2.47 Trillion (SS, Medicare, Medicaid, Interest, etc)
Department of Defense: $964 Billion
Department of Homeland Security: $43 Billion
That leaves us with $73 Billion on the table that we are going to "roll back" to pre 2008 spending levels. Well, wait - couple of gottcha's here: Some Department of Justice, and Department of energy spending is hands off (security and maintaining nukes). Also, while the budget was $3.55 Trillion, the government spent almost $4 Trillion.
Lets look at this just from the perspective of discretionary spending:
2010: 1.368 Trillion. After removing defense spending that leaves ~$368 Billion.
Numbers for 2007 Discretionary spending are a bit hard to find, but I did find this chart for 2007 non-defense discretionary spending:
http://perotcharts.com/2008/05/non-defense-discretionary-spending-in-2007/
that says the number was $493 Billion
So the Repubs want to cut non-defense discretionary spending from it's 2010 levels of $368 Billion to it's 2007 level of $493 Billion resulting in a total savings of NEGATIVE -$128 Billion!!!! (before things like aid to Israel, DoJ and the parts of police state funding that have been shoved off onto just about every other agency of the federal gvmt are protected from cuts).
That can't be right. Well, the Budget committee is arguing that it would cut 1 in 6 non-defense discretionary dollars. From 2010 levels, that would mean a savings of $168 Billion total. Or roughly what Congress spends every 2 weeks. WOW! - I'm soooo impressed! - NOT!
That 2.5 Trillion over 10 years in cuts ($250 Billion a year) looks better. At this rate, we could pay off the deficit in 56 years, before factoring in interest. Except that no one is talking about paying off a penny of the debt.
What is most disconcerting is they want to pass this resolution before they have firm numbers and leave what is cut up to one committee chairman. Does this sound familiar? Maybe like "you have to pass it to find out what's in it" Pelosi and a bunch of non-accountable, appointed bureaucrats doing the fine grain that we have to live with?
Has anything changed? Did Congress get the memo that we wanted serious reform and not an endless series of dog and pony shows?
When you think about it, this country could be in the black again in 4-5 years if it axed the regulatory agencies, brought our military back home and downsized everything in the government to Constitutional levels, while still keeping social security, medicare and medicaid.
Pure insanity!
-t