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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.
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