Posted by
Steve on Monday, August 01, 2011 9:37:50 AM
Over the weekend the House, Senate and Barack Obama came to an agreement on how to raise the debt limit. The plan as announced yesterday sounds a lot like the plan put out by House Speaker Boehner, only without the revisit in 2012. The spending cuts sound like they are illusionary, which means they will not happen. The commission will make recommendations which will be unpopular with Congress, which means those cuts will not happen.
The only way to make meaningful reforms to actually change Washington is to vote out those that have been there for a long time and replace them with those who support Tea Party ideals. This way we can get people in office who want to cut the federal government down to size and have the intestinal fortitude to actually make the necessary cuts. With the current crop, especially the Democrats and some establishment Republicans, they are willing to say they will cut, but never actually cut. The other thing is that when this current crop says they are cutting, they are not cutting. They are just slowing the rate of growth to a government program.
The government uses a baseline approach to budgeting. That means that they take the last year’s budget as a starting point. They add 10% to each program as an expected increase. Any reduction from the 10% increase is considered a cut. So, you could cut the increase from 10% to 5% and the current crop of House and Senate members would say they cut 5% from the budget. They did not cut 5% from the budget. They just slowed the increase. They should start with the last year’s budget and not expect any increase. Then, when they talk of a cut in the budget they would actually be making cuts to programs, not cutting their rate of growth.
Throughout this entire process Barack Obama did nothing except criticize those who were producing actual plans or urge people to criticize those who were producing the plans. He has to come out on this as a big loser, or at least as a very poor leader. I would consider Barack Obama a non-leader on this issue based on the way he handled the situation.
Harry Reid was not much better than Obama. He talked about a plan, but never actually produced it. So, we do not really know if he had a plan or if it was just smoke and mirrors. He also has to be considered a non-entity in this mess.
Rep. Boehner has to come out as a winner on this issue. He produced plan after plan that the Democrats gleefully shot down. The final plan looks much like the last plan that Rep. Boehner actually produced. It was watered down to make it more palatable to the Democrats.
The Tea Party has to be considered a winner. The Tea Party Republicans in the House never wavered in their ideals. That meant that the final plan is much closer to what the Tea Party wanted than what the Democrats wanted. They did not achieve complete victory. But, the Tea Party is not the leading group in Washington, YET. When it gains strength in 2012, the future negotiations will mirror their wishes more closely.
The deal as announced is not perfect. It is probably the best we could get given that the Democrats control the Senate and the White House. I wish the cuts that were announced were targeted, rather than unspecified. But that would be a minor point and nothing that should hold up a final agreement.