Posts in "Deficit"

By Julie VerHage at 11:20AM

Jul 31, 2011

Washington Speak

As has become more and more apparent in recent months, only in Washington can you continue to spend more and pass it off as a budget cut. I don't know about my fellow YAL members, but if I talked to my credit card company and told them that I couldn't stop spending more than my budget, but I could slow my increase in spending, the answer would be "No, you have to pay your bills or your credit score will take a hit."

Speaker Boehner's plan is a sad excuse for the actual spending cuts our country desperately needs. An article by Chris Edwards at the CATO institute points this out with a chart of spending and a link to the letter from the Congressional Budget Office explaining that his plan in fact only cuts $850 million and not the $1.2 trillion the Speaker has claimed.

A disturbing realization is found in the following statement,

The “cuts” in the Boehner plan are only cuts from the CBO baseline, which is an assumed path of constantly rising spending. If Congress wanted to, it could require CBO to increase its “baseline” spending by, say, $5 trillion over the next decade. Then Boehner could claim that he was “cutting” spending by $5.9 trillion, even though his plan hadn’t changed. You can see that discretionary “cuts” against baselines don’t mean anything.

I wonder what the Founding Fathers would say if they were to come back and find Washington in the state it is today.

Just for some added fun, check out this video by ReasonTV.

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By Mikayla Hall at 11:56AM

May 23, 2011

YAL-UW Addresses the Deficit

May 18 marked the third quarter in a row that the University of Washington's main political clubs (YAL, College Republicans, Young Democrats and the International Socialist Organization) got together to discuss their views on certain policies. This quarter, the forum actually replaced the decades-old CR/YD debate tradition.

The topic? "Addressing the Deficit." Keeping it broad, each group had a chance to discuss their own position on the topic and their desired policies, and then the floor opened for Q/A.

General ideas from each of the groups:

Young Americans for Liberty: Rethink tax policies/loopholes, cut spending by hundreds of billions of dollars, and question all graphs/government statistics.

College Republicans: Follow Rep. Ryan's proposal, end loopholes, keep policies local.

Young Democrats: End loopholes, have a progressive tax and focus on sustainable energy, education, etc.

Socialists: It is the government's responsibility to care for its people, so we shouldn't be making cuts to social services like Planned Parenthood, Social Security, etc. The rich/poor gap is astounding -- there is room for more taxation.

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By Wesley Messamore at 4:16PM

Dec 14, 2010

The Absurdity of the Tax Cut Debate

Restricting the national conversation to tax cuts effectively prevents any real fiscal reform from ever happening on Capitol Hill. That's because cutting taxes without cutting spending isn't really cutting taxes at all. It's deferring taxes to the future.

Imagine yourself in financial trouble, worrying over how much of your expenses you should pay with cash and how much you should pay with credit cards, but you never even consider reducing your expenses. The "debate" over tax cuts in recent months is about that absurd.

You definitely want to read the rest of my article at CAIVN to get some solid talking points for waking people up from the partisan duopoly's false dichotomies. Next time you hear anybody on either side of the "tax cut debate" bring it up, be ready to help them see past the wool over their eyes.

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By Matt Ciepielowski at 11:45AM

Apr 23, 2010

Surprise! Health Care Reform Will Add to Deficit

The Washington Post came out with a revelation today that should shock no one:

But the analysis also found that the law falls short of the president's twin goal of controlling runaway costs, raising projected spending by about 1 percent over 10 years. That increase could get bigger, since Medicare cuts in the law may be unrealistic and unsustainable, the report warned.

It's a worrisome assessment for Democrats.

Rest of the article here.

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By Peter Anthony Tariche at 9:31AM

Feb 15, 2010

Obama Signs Bill to Raise National Debt Limit

On Friday night President Barack Obama signed into law legislation which raised the national debt limit to $14.3 trillion.

From ABC News:

The new law also puts in place new budget rules to curb growing annual deficits. Known as "paygo" — for "pay as you go" — the rules require future spending increases or tax cuts to be paid for with tax increases or other spending cuts.
If the rules are broken, the White House budget office would force automatic cuts in programs like Medicare and farm subsidies. Most other benefit programs, including Medicaid, Social Security and food stamps, would be exempt.

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By Bonnie Kristian at 12:51PM

Feb 3, 2010

With government, "change" almost always means a change to more government.

And "bringing new ideas to Washington" means new ideas for how to spend your money. Bush's budgets were horrific, of course, but Obama has definitely made things worse (particularly note that large increase in aggressive war -- er, defense -- spending):

Click on the image for a larger view.

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By Roy Antoun at 3:56PM

Feb 2, 2010

Deficit & Debt: Goodbye American Power

The United States has an interesting role in global markets. Since World War II, the US has entangled itself in superfluous alliances and Keynesian markets, engaging in the same illusory markets as its European counterparts. As Jihan discussed, we have recently learned that President Barack Obama’s proposed federal budget may put the United States' economic legitimacy in even greater risk than it has been before for several reasons. Primary, our deficit is running off “nearly 11 percent of the country’s entire economic output.” But as the NY Times has stated, most deficits are usually brought down during peacetime. However, with the way the United States has been handling foreign policy as of recent, any form of “peacetime” seems like an ocean away from any “hope.”

From NYT - Carrying the Budget

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By Jihan Huq at 1:00PM

Feb 2, 2010

“How long can the world’s biggest borrower remain the world’s biggest power?”

That question was asked by Obama's Chief Economic Adviser, Lawrence H. Summers, one year ago. It's a question worth asking, because America's skyrocketing deficits will eventually have a global political impact. This is a chilling wake up call for those who believe arrogantly that the U.S is immune to the bankruptcies of empires in the pages of our history books.

The coming year's projected deficit (not the national debt -- just this year's deficit) is about 11% of the country's economic output. Meanwhile, deficits are not anticipated to return to sustainable levels over the next decade but to increase by 2019 or 2020 by about 5% of the gross domestic product.

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By Rachel Kania at 10:39PM

Nov 21, 2009

Health Care "Reform" = Higher Deficit, Inefficiency, and Control

According the the Congressional Budget Office, the health care "reform" bill will cost $848 billion and would cut the deficit by $130 billion over the next decade. This is ludicrous. Watch the video below to see just how irrational this mode of thinking is:

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By Bonnie Kristian at 6:15AM

Oct 19, 2009

Giant Budget Deficit Imperils Economic Recovery...Noooo, you think?

From Newser:

The federal deficit in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 was $1.4 trillion, lower than projected but still a record. At 10% of GDP, the figure is the largest since 1945, when the deficio lett was 21.5% of GDP. The figure made public today coincides with early rumblings about extending some features of last winter's $787 billion stimulus package, the New York Times reports.
"It was critical that we acted to bring the economy back from the brink earlier this year," said White House OMB director Peter Orszag. "The president recognizes that we need to put the nation back on a fiscally sustainable path."

So let me get this straight: The deficit is huge, rightfully making us concerned that it's going to completely screw us over while trying to get out of this panic. Nonetheless it was a good thing we spent huge amounts of money and created a deficit of this size. However, the president thinks we should still be more fiscally responsible. But we still might want to continue to spend more money like we have been.

Basically, the conclusion seems to be that we're worried about the deficit but we're not and we don't think we should spend more but we do. Well, at least we're getting our taxtdollars worth on the spin doctors they're hiring.

Read more here

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