Tea Party-Two Party

Ice Ice Baby: Budget Freeze Part 1 | February 21, 2010

JUST THE FACTS:

• If you take a look at the numbers, shown in this pretty little infographic, we can see that the mandated programs like Social Security and Medicare are the biggest budget drains.
• President Obama’s $3.83 trillion budget will have a $1.56 trillion deficit.
• The deficit alone will be larger than individual and corporate income taxes combined.
• The freeze would affect about $477 billion in money available for domestic agencies whose budgets are approved by Congress each year. It’s a relatively small portion of the federal budget and is considered discretionary spending.
• Fact Check takes a look at some of the optimism coming out of the White House

GUILDER: Barack Obama has just unveiled a $3.83 TRILLION (that’s 8 zeros folks) federal budget for 2010 with a 1.56 trillion dollar deficit (That’s over 40% of the budget financed by debt and inflation) For all the political kudos Barack Obama has been getting for making a “politically risky” choice in his proposed cutbacks on discretionary spending, his budget will do about as much freezing to our deficit as a blast furnace would to an ice cube. In all honesty, when I first heard Obama mention his budget freeze in last month’s State of the Union Address, I was convinced that he was making real reforms: as he mentioned behemoth programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and National Defense Spending, I thought he was going take some genuine steps toward fiscal responsibility. That was, of course, until he told the nation that those programs were NOT to be included in his budget freeze. I’ll gladly launch into a debate on the principles behind why increased government spending is less efficient than comparable private sector spending, and why borrowing from other countries and having inflation is bad for the economy, but I’ll save that for comments to keep this short. In the meantime, check out these statistics compiled by DownsizeDC.org.

• “The deficit alone will be larger than individual and corporate income taxes combined
• The cost of the federal government will be over $36,000 per family
  of which $17,000 will be new debt
• The cost of the federal government is vastly greater than the benefits it provides. And the American people don’t want such a bloated budget.
• According to a January 29 Rasmussen Report, 53% of likely voters now believe that decreasing the level of government spending will help the U.S. economy, and they’re right.
• Numerous studies indicate that growth in government spending harms the economy and increases unemployment. Nations such as Ireland, New Zealand, and Slovakia experienced tremendous growth once they slashed the size of government.”

Essentially, Obama’s proposed budget freeze solution ignores the biggest sources of our deficit, not including the stimulus measures. Though many of these programs are labeled as “mandatory” or “non-discretionary” spending, all of these budgets could be easily reduced. Of the thirty-one listed spending areas for Barack Obama’s 2010 budget, seven programs, Social Security, National Defense, Unemployment & Welfare spending, Medicare, Medicaid, and “Off-budget Discretionary Spending” (i.e. the CIA budget) make up 78.45% of the budget, according to my calculator. It’s laughable to think that all Defense spending is mandatory when we have at least 700 hundred military bases in 130 countries, while fighting a two wars. Social Security is essentially a giant Ponzi Scheme that never should have been created in the first place. In short, I oppose Obama’s budget because it continues to fully support, rather than begin scaling down, programs that constitute our largest fiscal drains while continuing an imperialistic national defense policy.

Check out Part 2, with Florin’s response and a conclusion.