Pledge to America

I'm all about balancing the budget. Supposedly, so is the tea party. However, theres quite a disconnect between what most people seem to mean when they say "cut spending" and the actual reality. Here's a breakdown of the total federal budget. It's probably the single most politically informative thing I've looked at all year. Look at it long and hard. Keep in mind, this is also before the costs (or savings, if you think that's going to happen) of the new healthcare bill kick in.

I'm not going to say that there isn't a lot of wasted money in all parts of that budget. But you really can't ignore that the biggest chunks are Military, Social Security, and Medicare. That's the current medicare, too, not Obamacare. So it's a good thing the tea partiers are willing to see those things drastically cut back, right? Oh wait, no, they want to keep all those things. And they want to keep the Bush tax cuts. And they want to cut taxes across the board.

I suppose the idea is that if you starve government programs for money, they're going to find ways to become leaner and meaner. If you subscribe to this hypothesis, then it makes sense to say "education is broken" and use this as a justification to cut school funding.

Alright, fair enough. But education is a tiny little block way over on the far right of that budget breakdown. What about the big chunks? You know, military spending? Social Security? It seems unlikely that the tea partiers, who have a heavy constituency of people benefitting from those programs, are going to be willing (or able!) to see those benefit checks get leaner. NPR's Guy Raz interviewed former Reagan advisor David Stockman the other day, who pointed out that the Republican's new Pledge To America (also their attempt to woo tea party votes) "exempts seniors" as well as defense spending from their proposed cuts. As Stockman points out in the interview, once you add all that up and include interest payments on the national debt, you've exempted two thirds of the federal budget from budget cuts.

Even if you somehow managed to cut spending in half on everything that isn't exempted (which includes most government agencies like Border Patrol, FBI, CDC, FDA, the Department of Transportation, as well as education) you'd still have an unsound budget and thats WITHOUT extending the tax cuts.

I'm not an expert on fiscal policy, but this just doesn't add up. Sure, the democratic plan seems to be to spend a lot and tax a lot. But the Pledge to America plan seems to be founded on the principle of having your cake and eating it too. So who do I vote for that has the guts to massively cut military spending and kick the chair out from under millions of retirees and medicare beneficiaries so we can ACTUALLY balance the budget?

Right. That's a terrible idea, and it will probably never happen. So maybe, at least, in the interest of fiscal responsibility, someone who isn't a Democrat should step and admit that extending the Bush Tax Cuts is a terrible idea too. The idea that America can be a superpower, have social programs like europe, and do it with the tax rate of Hong Kong is just a little far fetched for me. Oh, and don't tell me we can just get rid of those social programs unless you really mean it. That's Social Security, Medicare, and vet benefits.