About That $38 Billion In Budget Cuts
By Wyatt Earp | April 14, 2011
According to the CBO, it’s all smoke and mirrors. The actual budget cuts won’t come anywhere near the numbers that Congress, the Senate, and Obama promised us.
You may not know – or care – what this means, so I’ll put it in its simplest terms: It’s over. Spending will continue to increase, cuts will decrease, taxes will rise, and we will be bankrupt within a decade.
A new budget estimate released Wednesday shows that the spending bill negotiated between President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner would produce less than 1 percent of the $38 billion in promised savings by the end of this budget year.
The Congressional Budget Office estimate shows that compared with current spending rates the spending bill would cut federal outlays from non-war accounts by just $352 million through Sept. 30. About $8 billion in immediate cuts to domestic programs and foreign aid are offset by nearly equal increases in defense spending.
Ace summed up the “apocalypse” fairly succinctly:
$352 million, with an m, in cuts. What the government spends in… oh, it’s like $6 billion a day, so $352 million is what the government spends in about an hour and twenty minutes.
That change people voted for? You’re gonna get it. America will soon be Greece.
Topics: Politics | 18 Comments »
April 14th, 2011 at 1:00 pm
“That change people voted for? You’re gonna get it. America will soon be Greece.”
Greece? No. Wyatt, grease. As in grease up, BOHICA.
April 14th, 2011 at 2:04 pm
Greece – rate we are going, that might not be a bad result.
I’n think more pre-WWII Germany myself.
April 14th, 2011 at 4:24 pm
As the current stage of deflation ends and rapid inflation translates into hyper inflation and the Fed keeps printing
billions of new bucks each month to inject into the economy, the world will realize the only way we can pay our bills is with FUNNY money and the dollar as world reserve currency will end and then we will be further devalued against other world currencies with good bond ratings and each and every one of us will have to become a burger flipper in an economy where no-one will be able to afford meat. This will really begin to happen in late 2011 and 2012 so go out and spend whatever you have NOW and have some fun before we are all walking economic zombies. At least we can laugh paying the Chinese back with worthless money:) LOL
April 14th, 2011 at 4:29 pm
In fact didn’t Zimbabwe a short awhile ago have 100 billion ‘whatever’ notes, well the Fed can print up a few hundred of the new 1 Trillion dollar bills and mail em out to whomever we owe with a note saying…There we’re even. Please come again.
April 14th, 2011 at 4:45 pm
We are SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Boned!!!
April 14th, 2011 at 5:06 pm
We where boned the day that “gentleman” took the oath of office!
April 14th, 2011 at 6:51 pm
Robert B. – Expect unemployment to rise exponentially, especially after Obama mentioned tax increases.
Mallamutt – Let’s invade Poland! //
Jon – Hopefully, our new currency will consist of .
Ferrell – I think we’re past the point of no return. Hope I’m wrong.
Dustyvet – And Congress lost its backbone.
April 14th, 2011 at 7:25 pm
You are wrong about bankrupt in ten years. If I can’t repay my debts I am bankrupt now that is the status of the country called The United States of America. They cannot repay their debts now. That is the truth about every effort to borrow more money – there isn’t a plan to fix the stupidity, a real plan, so it is over. They will contact you when they need your money, more frequently and more dollars. All you should do is enjoy your life, pay off all of your bills and invest in your children and marriage, close family and friends. The country is doomed, self destruct button was pushed long ago. But I will be lurking to see what you share about it.
April 14th, 2011 at 7:34 pm
This IS the same CBO that said, initially, that ObamaCare would save money, right? Today they voted to keep the government going. And while I can appreciate the emotional satisfaction of saying “SHUT IT DOWN” what that means is the GOP gets SCREWED.
Boehner got stabbed in the back by a lot of the Freshman GOP congresscritters today. The voted to shut down the government, EVEN THOUGH ALL the Polls say the GOP will be blamed for it, and even though it would mean the troops and disabled vets wouldn’t get paid.
And these sharp (/) GOP Freshman think Boehner should have had a stand alone bill to fund the troops and vets, completely ignoring the fact that neither Reid nor Obama would have gone for that, saying instead that we needed an “over all” bill to keep funding the government. And making it even more unlikely that Ryan’s budget – the BEST anyone has come up with in YEARS, will get passed.
Boehner’s mistake has been that he has been TOO accomodating to the know nothing GOP Freshman – mostly tea party folks. Hell Nancy Pelosi had ALL the Dems voting her way or they’d have found themselves in basement offices, with 1/3 of the staff and never invited to any events of any significance had they crossed her.
I dont think Boehner is nasty enough to be Speaker of the House.
April 14th, 2011 at 7:38 pm
Earl – I’d argue if I could, but you’re right; we’re one swirl from going down the toilet and Washington doesn’t care.
Real – I don’t, either. That being said, if they shut it down and get blamed for it – so what? The Dems are destroying the economy, so let them own it. It’s armageddon either way, so what difference does it make if we implode now or two years from now?
They’ve already spent the “cuts” we just agreed to, so what does it matter anymore? We’re gonna need a bailout, and it’s probably coming from China. You folks like that scenario? Obama wants a world economy – well, America is gonna get one. Seriously, I am fed up with all of them.
April 14th, 2011 at 7:57 pm
Wyatt if the DEMS WOULD OWN IT, I’d be in favor of shutting the government down. But in two years the GOP could have the House, the Senate AND the WH and then we COULD save America – and this wouldn’t mean not paying the troops or disabled vets while we’re in two and a half wars, no less.
Hell ALL the polls say the GOP woulda been blamed for shutting the government down, even Rasmussen. Obama is in the process of self-destructing – gas at $5 a gallon come summer, 412,000 AMERICANS filed for First time Unemployment benefits last week and the GOP wants to get blamed for shutting the government down and not paying the troops??
No, I don’t think so.
April 14th, 2011 at 8:27 pm
Third world here we come… sigh…
April 14th, 2011 at 8:29 pm
Real – I don’t want the troops to be unpaid, but that’s probably coming, anyway. We’re gonna be broke. And the GOP ain’t sweeping the Big Three. Pip dream.
Old NFO – Embrace your inner Sudan!
April 14th, 2011 at 10:08 pm
Want to read about an economic collapse and what we’re actually heading for by people who survived it?
http://www.silverbearcafe.com/private/10.08/tshtf1.html
It’s a four page read, but is well worth it. This is what we have been preparing for. We’ve been seeing this coming for a few years now. More people are just now beginning to see this coming.
April 14th, 2011 at 11:24 pm
The only way out of this mess is reasonable budget cuts, and to let the economy grow us out of debt. What we should do is just return to a copy of the 2008 spending levels, before Obama started adding trillions of pork to the tab.
April 14th, 2011 at 11:30 pm
Thanks Kim it was a well worth it read, now if I were only 40 years younger to be about the authors age I just might survive:) LOL
April 15th, 2011 at 12:24 am
Americans for Tax Reform usually represents the hard-line, no-taxes front of fiscal conservatism and would normally be more inclined to hammer the GOP for weakness on policy than defend them. On this point, though, ATR says that the eruption of outrage over outlays is both misplaced and unfair:
First, the nit-picking on numbers is a result of conflation between how the government budgets and how it spends money. The entire FY 2011 budget discussion has revolved around the government’s Budget Authority (BA), the permission given to government to spend money. Thus, the House-passed H.R.1 cut $61 billion in BA for the fiscal year, while H.R. 1473 cuts almost $40 billion.
Some are arguing now that because these cuts are not reflected in outlays, or the money that actually goes out the door, they are not “real.” This is not only disingenuous, it is totally ignorant of the way the federal government budgets.
What’s more, it is an entirely nonsensical conservative position to argue that rescinding permission to spend money does not equate to spending cuts. To reform the federal budget process, small government advocates need to address the way government spends money – as the process is driven by BA, and not outlays, it is unhelpful to discuss budget-cutting in terms of outlays. It is especially malevolent to do so now in the eleventh hour of the budget fight that has revolved entirely around a discussion of BA for FY 2011.
Oh, and was that the same CBO that said ObamaCare would cut hundreds of Billions of dollars in Federal expenditures just before ObamaCare came to a vote?!
April 15th, 2011 at 1:28 am
Farmers better set up a good perimeter guard.