The non-defense discretionary spending that Obamaaims to reduce now totals $477 billion a yearor just 14% of the federalbudget. Freezing this outlay would save $25 billion a year, or about 2% of theannual $1.4 trillion deficit.
Had this plan been part of a government-wide belttightening effort, the White House might have been able to call itself"serious about cutting the budget deficit" anywhere other than in afantasy land. But the announcement came as the Politico reported theadministration was telling defense contractors of its commitment to"steady growth in the Pentagon's budgets"budgets so distended bywars and outdated weapons systems that they now top $700 billion a year.
The good news is that House Speaker Nancy Pelosisays she does "not think the entire defense budget should beexempted" from deficit-cutting initiatives, and rightly so. Short ofeliminating every department in the non-defense discretionary budget (Education,Health and Human Services, Labor, to name just a few), she knows there's notenough money in that budget category to dent the deficit. She understands, inother words, that getting "serious" about deficit reduction meansbeginning the frank conversation about Pentagon bloat that the White Houserefuses to initiate.
That, of course, gets to the bad news about whatObama's budget freeze proposal is actually "serious" aboutreducingnot deficits, but honest discussion.
For 30 years, Republicans and conservative Democratshave precluded factual debates about spending priorities. They’ve done this forthree reasons: They seek to protect defense-industry campaign contributors;they fear an electoral backlash against cuts to mandatory programs like SocialSecurity and Medicare; and they are afraid to antagonize the wealthy withpragmatic tax legislation to shore up these mandatory programs (for instance,they avoid bills that would apply Social Security taxes to all incomenot justincome below $106,000).
Hence, these lawmakers deviously portray non-defensediscretionary programs as the cause of our deficit. Their favored instrument ofdeceit is the malicious tale of loafers supposedly getting rich off theseprograms and driving us into debtthe tale that Obama's budget proposalimplicitly reinforces.
These fantasies, no matter how untrue, achieve twoobjectives: 1) They get the middle and working classes fighting each other forbudgetary scraps, rather than fighting the plutocrats feasting on real budgetmeat and 2) They lobotomize the electorate.
A new Rasmussen survey tells that latter story: Whenasked if they believe that defense, Social Security and Medicare alone nowcomprise half of all federal spending, 20% of Americans said they did not know,and 44% said no. That's two-thirds of national poll respondents too brainwashedto realize the truthtoo blinded by mythology to accept that most federalspending has nothing to do with the non-defense discretionary programs thatObama and his Reaganite predecessors have cited as a prime deficit culprit.
Thus, even if Congress rejects this particularbudget freeze proposal, long-term damage has already been done. In adding aDemocratic president's name to deceptive propaganda, Obama has helpedperpetuate mass ignorance by short-circuiting the national discussion we needto havethe discussion about taxes and defense spending that the countryrequires and the deficit demands.
David Sirotais the author of the best-selling books "Hostile Takeover" and"The Uprising." He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado andblogs at OpenLeft.com. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.comor follow him on Twitter @davidsirota.
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