On Earmarks
War, tax cuts and the recession are the true causes of the deficit
Bullying Republican Senate leaders into a "voluntary" ban on earmarks may represent a political triumph for the tea party movement, but as a measure to reduce the federal deficit it is a meaningless substitute for real action. The facts about earmarks—and the deficit, for that matter—are so simple that even the dumbest birther should be able to understand.
Funds directed to specific projects by legislators—which is what earmarks are—account for around 1% of any annual budget, so they represent far too little money to substantially reduce the budget. Besides, banning earmarks won't reduce the budget (or the deficit) anyway, because they are drawn from funds that have already been appropriated.
So much for that sideshow, a cynical exercise whose only conceivable purpose is to deceive voters. How would serious people try to reduce the deficit? First, it is essential to understand how and why the deficit grew in the first place.
It isn't the stimulus, stupid. And it isn't the bailouts, either.
Compared with the actual causes of the long-term deficit, neither the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) nor the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) amounts to much—even though they were successfully demonized by the same people who make noise about earmarks. Most of the TARP expenditures will be recovered eventually. And according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), whose analysis is broadly respected as nonpartisan and accurate, all of the stimulus spending will account for slightly more than $1 trillion between 2009 and 2019, including debt service.
Bush’s War and Tax Cuts Added to the Deficit
Now
a trillion dollars sounds like a lot of money, even over a decade, and it
is—except when measured against the far greater costs of the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan and the tax cuts enacted during the Bush administration.
As
many commentators noted at the time, no president before George W. Bush had
embarked on a major war—let alone two wars—without raising revenue to pay the
costs. The CBPP estimate of the combined cost of the Iraq and Afghan conflicts
and the Bush tax cuts adds nearly $7 trillion to the federal deficits between
2009 and 2019, or roughly six to seven times the amount attributed to the
stimulus.
Still
paying attention? The other underlying causes of the long-term deficit are the
lingering costs imposed by the recession, which will continue to eat away at the
federal budget for a decade to come, and the rising national bill for health
care as the population ages.
No,
stupid, that doesn't mean the deficit is caused by health care reform or
"Obamacare"—although that has been demonized, too. In fact, the president's
attempt to reform America's broken, ridiculously inflated system of delivering
medical care is likely to reduce health care costs significantly, but that is
only a beginning.
Proposals
to reduce the deficit by impoverishing seniors, punishing middle-class families
and neglecting infrastructure and education will do more harm than good. The
deepest problem in the U.S. economy is the gross tilt of income and wealth
toward the very top and the distortion of policy to favor financial
manipulation rather than real growth.
Perhaps
it is time to listen again to the only president in recent memory who balanced
four budgets and left a surplus for the Republicans to squander. He achieved
those goals not by cutting spending, shutting down the government or ending
welfare, but raising taxes on the wealthy in his first budget. There will be no
progress toward fiscal balance and economic sanity until we acknowledge those
facts—and stop listening to stupid.
2010 Creators.com
Wow. Conason is obviously coming completely unhinged. Does he realize that his weak column is run almost exclusively in the lefty domain of the weekly newspaper? Who is he berating and calling stupid?
By the way Joe, are you seriously telling us that not having enough money is due to everything except spending too much money?
I guess you missed the part:
Bush’s War and Tax Cuts Added to the Deficit
Which doesn't surprise me as I've seen your posts & you're a rightard without a clue...
Nice- @wiscactor is yet another liberal who can't post without name calling. But seriously, I agree that the cost of the wars (one of which the Rockstar-In-Chief) is choosing to continue ad infinitum) was and is outrageous. Shouldn't have happened. But you, wiscactor, are the ignorant one- cutting taxes is not spending. If your company loses an account, and thus loses some revenue, did the company spend that money? Obviously not. Better yet, if I am forced to support my neighbor by paying for his food, and I am suddenly allowed to stop supporting him, did anyone spend any money in that transaction? Stealing less money from citizens is not spending.
No, the real issue is not the deficit, but that is an easy lightning rod to use in the ultimate goal.
The real issue that the working class people of this state are complaining about is the changes forced on them by state and federal policies. The fact that they can no longer live a comfortable life and still save for a rainy day, nay, already spent those savings and now living on credit, only serves to make the issue immediate. The Tea Party and it's platform of reducing government powers and the big government deficit was just a handy way to vent that frustration, not to mention that support of which is (falsely?) understood to be the best way to handle these real issues.
The real issue of the voters is loss of local control, loss of the "natural order" of things. Much like posse comitatus movements, which literally means "Power of the County" (they take it to the extreme, recognize the county Sheriff as the highest valid official, and will string him up if he steps out of line). The frustration is that both state and federal governments have "intruded" into our local lives. Taxing our income and property, and sending it somewhere else, to people that are "not like us", and imposing outside rules on what was once local like how we use our land and natural resources, how we run our schools, how we maintain local law and order. Doesn't matter if our local practices were considered by others as racist, feminist, or any others -ists, it was how things had been done for generations.
But, we can't fix those outside problems by making local rules, first order of business seems to be to shutdown the outside influence that prevented us from keeping our local rules. While each local area has its own idea of what specific changes are needed (means we are really divided and each area stands alone), the common villain is federal and state governments. In that, we divided areas can all agree on.
Watch out for the diversionary tactics here. While were were focusing on Bill and Monica's shenanigans, Congress repealed the Glass-Steagall Act with a veto over-riding 90%, it allowed your safe FDIC-guaranteed Main Street funds to be mixed with risky Wall Street instruments. While we were scrutinizing Watergate, our government was setting up a relationship with China, where did your outsourced jobs go to? I just hope that our blind ambition on what you think is stripping Obama of any powers does not end up putting control in the hands of the big-business lobbyists... which of course are not "local" either.