Posted on 04/04/2011 10:22:42 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Gigot: Welcome to "The Journal Editorial Report." I'm Paul Gigot.
With a government shutdown looming, House Republicans appeared to be closer to a deal with Senate Democrats and the White House on a bill to fund the government for the remainder of the fiscal year, with a reported $33 billion in spending on the chopping block. But Tea Party supporters who rallied on Capitol Hill didn't seem impressed, calling on House Speaker John Boehner to hold out for more.
Joining the panel this week, Wall Street Journal columnist and deputy editor Dan Henninger, assistant editorial page editor James Freeman and senior economics writer Steve Moore.
So Steve, you've been following the budget talks. Are there enough cuts on the table to satisfy the likes of the Tea Party?
Moore: You know, I think there should be, Paul. When you look at how the culture of spending has really changed just over the last year, it's really pretty remarkable. Over the last three years, spending has been growing by about 12% per year.
Gigot: Wow.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
$61 billion is a start in the right direction. Wish it was more, but I’ll take it as a first step in what is sure to be a very long trek to restoring fiscal sanity.
I will officially answer:
It is HARDLY ENOUGH. It is a mere starting point. If any republican leader thinks this is enough, they better take pictures of the Capitol right now because they aren’t going to be there come January 2013.
Boehner to introduce one-week stopgap to stave off shutdown (Pelosi had more of a pair)
As of yet not one dime has been cut from authorized spending. So I will believe it when I see it.
$61 billion is what should be getting cut from each of these 2-week CRs that that are passing.
It should be $500billion a year to be confident of avoiding default.
Soundbites make this a lot easier to understand than it really is.
We “know” that we spent 800 billion on TARP — but it turns out in the end that TARP is well less than 100 billion. How? Because it was loan guarantees, and loans, and purchases of stocks and equity interests, and as the economy didn’t collapse we are unwinding those instruments and most of the money never really “left”. So while the budget looked bad, it wasn’t like we really spent twice our previous budget.
Also, we had two really bad years where we didn’t get tax revenues. That has been getting better, so while we reject “tax increase”, tax revenue is increasing. Part of the deficit from Obama wasn’t him spending more money, but us getting less money.
Getting back to 2008 levels of spending might be good enough, if we also can get rid of the anti-business regulation put in place by the democrats; 2008 spending was too high relative to what the economy generated, but the economy should be able to grow, and increase revenue that way without raising taxes.
If you had told people before the election that we would be able to freeze spending, and then reduce it by 33 billion in THIS fiscal year, I think people would have been extatic. After all, this is a budget year entirely controled by Democrats. They had a huge house majority, and a filibuster-proof senate. They were able to pass Obamacare without any republicans, they could have passed a budget without us, spending as much as they wanted to. And it’s not like they would have lost MORE than 64 seats if they had.
So we need to focus on 2012 — that’s our budget, and it has to be good, and Paul Ryan is doing real work there. But this year — it’s gravy. We have a chance to do something about the runaway spending, and it’s a lucky break for us, and it shouldn’t turn into a way for democrats to split us apart and beat us.
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