It never ends.
Quick. How much money will be cut from 2012’s level of federal spending in 2013 if there is no agreement to repeal the Budget Control Act of 2011?
Give a ballpark estimate.
If you answered “none,” you’ve got it right.
The so-called sequestration is not a reduction in spending from today’s level. It is a cut from however much spending would have gone up. It will go up by less.
How much money is involved? A grand total of $109 billion. This, in a budget of $3.8 trillion.
Let’s do a word association exercise. I will write a word. You tell me the word that follows.
My word is “chump.”
The reduction in the rate of increased spending will come at the expense of which agencies?
No one is saying. Articles mention the military and other unnamed agencies.
In short, this is all kabuki theater on the reduced spending side of the fiscal cliff’s equation. It will not make any economic difference that is worth bothering about.
The debate is over increased taxes. The players are trying to find a way to repeal the Budget Control Act of 2011. That also was kabuki theater, as today’s Congress is trying to prove. But the law is about to be implemented, contrary to majority opinion when Congress voted for it. “Budget control? No problem! We have a solution!” Now the solution is about to take effect. Congress will remain in session until it is replaced on January 3. It is a death watch.
Now they are playing positioning games to blame the other party for not being willing to cancel the tax hikes, stick it to the rich a little more, and allow the deficit to remain in the trillion-dollars-a-year range for another year or two or three or ten.
“Yes, we have no solutions. We have no solutions today.”
Continue reading on reuters.com.
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Published on December 28, 2012. The original is here.
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