$10.5 trillion is a serious number. I would support a package of spending cuts of this magnitude. If we are serious about dealing with our long term fiscal situation before we go into the ditch, this would be a good start. BUT ... $10.5 trillion in cuts over ten years necessitates big cuts in entitlements. We CANNOT get there otherwise. Over 60 percent of the federal budget is entitlements, and that is where the growth is. Defense is the biggest piece of discretionary spending, and Trump (correctly) wants to increase that, to begin undoing some of the damage of the Obama era.
I have no idea what will eventually emerge, but if they are talking cuts of this magnitude, they MUST go after entitlements. On non-defense discretionary spending, there will be a blizzard of proposed cuts, most of them small. But to illustrate the problem: I've been scanning the RSC proposal. Most of the cuts in non-defense discretionary spending, I can happily support. There are a couple that would cause me real heartburn, and that I think are frankly misguided even from a hard core conservative perspective. If I were in Congress, I would swallow hard and vote for the package as a package, but if it begins to unravel, I would go to bat for my pet programs as well. And if entitlements are off the table, my motivation to support a painful package would be severely lessened, as pissant savings from a grab bag of small federal programs, many of them very useful, are simply irrelevant if we don't tackle the real budget drivers.
Go big or go home. If we don't tackle entitlements, we're not being serious, or credible, or honest. Yes, Trump took entitlements off the table during the campaign. This was one of the many reasons that so many from the congressional wing of the party, as well as the "intellectual" wing, had trouble coming to terms with Trump. We had a Republican nominee who blithely ignored the arithmetic. For people who have spent their lives crunching numbers, and who believe this may be our last chance, that's an issue.
Of course, Trump ignoring the math is one of the reasons the Democrats had trouble with him as well. Democrats were not used to a Republican candidate who looked at a $19 trillion debt and said it was a good time to borrow more money, or who looked at an actuarially bankrupt Social Security program, and said "hands off." Trump's rhetoric on these questions was every bit as irresponsible as the standard Democrat line. So ... it's time for Trump to stop being a loose cannon, and look at the numbers.
President Trump and Congress should seriously consider this a first step in cutting entitlement spending.
Trump wants to renew and rebuild the DoD. I don't know that he said he wants to spend more money. My understanding is that he wants to start by getting something for what we spend - like cutting the cost of the F35 or finding and alternative. Cutting back the cost of AF-1 to something reasonable.
You cannot pour more money into the bloated bureaucratic sclerotic DoD acquisition process and get anything but more bloat and D.C. beltway banditry.
Trump ran on not cutting entitlements so it won’t, and shouldn’t, happen.
Voters don’t like being lied to.
(He didn’t rule out ALL entitlements though.)
Don’t get me laughing at the ‘congressional wing’calling Trump irresponsible. My heart can’t take that kind of guffawing.
Congessional wing: “Trump’s ignoring the math!”, now that’s funny- no matter who you are.
We get a 10 trillion cut and don’t have to pass entitlement reform over the objection of the voters- like the Dems did with healthcare.
At least they hadn’t promised not to ‘reform’ healthcare during the campaign!
“The danger, of course, is that Trump will be goaded by a news story and erupt with a tweet” This is just silliness, can’t take such arguments seriously- or people who stoop to them. Hopefully you were injecting levity.
... “ that sabotages an opportunity that may never come again.”
Like the Dems had with health reform. Again- at least they’d discussed that during the campaigns. NO REPUBLICAN WON BY PROMISING TO CUT ENTITLEMENTS.
D@mn straight maybe we should keep Obama he doesn't tweet.
So, you are not in favor of eliminating government to meet what would be needed to keep those programs untouched?
You are a freaking BIG Government lover.
“If we don’t tackle entitlements, we’re not being serious, or credible, or honest.”
If they can cut $10 trillion over 10 years, then that is serious - and it sets up entitlement reform next.
If they clear out non-defense discretionary spending first, in a really unprecedented way, they will gain great credibility to take on entitlements next (if still needed, after growth turns up).
All this bureaucratic crap SHOULD be cut first anyway, before digging into the livelihoods of the working poor and middle class.
The added beauty is that most of this government overgrowth is precisely where the leftists have been digging in, so you can disproportionately prune them out of power when you eliminate the whole activity which draws them - government organizations dedicated to racial identity issues, climate change, income redistribution, etc.
Just defund the left en masse, and cut the government permanently in the first budget - it is the real waste.
I disagree that Trump took entitlements off the table during the campaign.
He mentioned cutting waste, fraud, and abuse including in the welfare programs and Medicare and Medicaid and Disability, all of which are “entitlements”. Under Obama, millions of people went from collecting unemployment to collecting disability claiming “stress”. Stress of being unemployed. Fraud, in other words.
Trump mentioned “making Social Security stronger”, which obviously does not mean leaving it to coast along as it is. Whether that equates to means-testing or private accounts or what, I don’t know, but it can’t mean “hands off”. I don’t particularly like the idea of pushing back SS and Medicare eligibility to 70. That is moving the goal posts for people who have planned for decades. Older workers should step aside to make room for younger workers, and pushing retirement out prevents that.
Trump mentioned making Medicare more cost effective by negotiating directly with drug companies amongst other things.
And of course his main theme of restarting industry in America and the privatized rebuilding of infrastructure means job holders rather than welfare collectors. So that is also a spending cut to entitlements.
I’d say Trump left $300B-$400B/yr of “entitlements” cuts on the table during his campaign.