Struggling to pass a budget for the remainder of this fiscal year, Democrats and Republicans agreed on which budget to sign into law just hours before the midnight deadline. The GOP was pushing for an additional $22 billion in cuts that did not transpire.
Thirty-nine billion is a lot of money, and it is a good place to start when it comes to reining in the national deficit and looming debt problems. But when the national debt is on the order of $14 trillion, $39 billion is chump-change. Here are a few tricks I use when I trying to understand how much money these figures represent. First, try reading “14 trillion dollars” as “fourteen million millions of dollars.” It takes a couple seconds for that to sink in. This past weekend’s budget cuts are barely 0.27% of the nation’s deficit. If the deficit and inflation held constant (they won’t), it would take 371 years of similar cuts to eliminate the federal debt completely. So why all the hullabaloo? The answer seems to be that the cuts, despite what real and direct effects they may cause, are mainly symbolic. Let me explain.
Turn back the clock to November of last year. The GOP is feeling pretty good. They won six new seats in the Senate and sixty-three in the House. They’re thinking ahead to the 2012 election cycle. What issues are going to be the heavy-hitters in the next election, and what can we do about them? If you guessed the national debt, then dear reader, you would be spot on. Republicans needed to demonstrate their commitment to reducing the national debt. The GOP, in an effort spearheaded by Paul Ryan, the House Budget Committee Chairman, has proposed a budget with ten-year spending about $6 trillion less in spending than our President’s budget. That is a plan that’s going to pull this nation out of debt. So what we see here is GOP’s two-fold approach: The long-term goal actually closing the deficit accomplished via broad federal cuts, and the short-term proof of concept and showcase of willingness via the $39 billion in cuts for this fiscal year. Follow the jump for rest.
Looking deeper into the budget cuts scheduled for this year, the legislation is itself representative of Republican doctrine of this time. With cuts aimed at Planned Parenthood and NPR, Republicans leadership is swinging the proverbial budget axe at some of the biggest conservative pet-peeves of our time. Both these provisions were dropped before the bill passed the senate, but what’s important are that programs liberals once believed to be untouchable are now in the crosshairs.
If the NPR scandal has moved to your peripheral, here’s a recount. In a situation blistering with irony, the president and CEO and NPR was caught on tape with gems like “And not just Islamaphobic but really xenophobic. I mean basically, [the tea-party] are, they believe in sort of white, middle-America, gun toting. I mean, it’s scary. They’re seriously racist people.” NPR never was known for practicing discretion. Live by the sword; die by the sword. Following this incident, along with the firing of Juan Williams, no one could really argue NPR was broadcasting a fair-and-balanced agenda that deserved federal funding. I already feel some nostalgia for debates I held with my friends over the allocation of federal funding for NPR. Melancholy is but a small price to pay for sanity.
As far as Planned Parenthood goes, we’ve heard the rote line from Democrats over and over: “Federal funding isn’t used to fund abortions, so what have you got to complain about?” Here’s the problem: Planned Parenthood likes to describe itself as an organization that helps low-income women with family affairs. Where does such an organization get around to forming a political action committee that donates $286,986 to politicians, and sends 99% of this to Democrats. An organization can’t go on receiving federal money and unilaterally support one party. It should be supporting any political party. It should be using that quarter of a million dollars to subsidize one of its legitimate practices, not lobbying. It’s like bargaining with the same party on both sides of the table.
Politics have always been measured with an element of symbolism (see: the presidential election of 2008). There are three things we now know to be true: Republicans have made their point and made it well, Democrats are getting nervous, and Charlie Sheen is still winning (duh). But save the pats on the back for 2012.
