Well, maybe that is changing. Via the Hill: "Trump team prepares dramatic cuts."
The departments of Commerce and Energy would see major reductions in funding, with programs under their jurisdiction either being eliminated or transferred to other agencies. The departments of Transportation, Justice and State would see significant cuts and program eliminations.I'm with Ace on this one: I'll believe it when I see it.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be privatized, while the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities would be eliminated entirely.
Overall, the blueprint being used by Trump’s team would reduce federal spending by $10.5 trillion over 10 years.
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This is the same budget that was voted down by a 162-vote margin in 2015 by the GOP House.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be privatized, while the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities would be eliminated entirely.
Now that's evidence of fiscal seriousness. 0.006% down, just 99.994% of our unsustainable costs to go. And when Mexico pays us back for the wall, the bottom line will look even better than that.
As somebody who has been arguing forever for entitlement reform, I say bring on the unserious budget cuts.
The money we'll be saving on PBS and the National Endowments between now and (literally) the year 2499 will exactly offset the taxpayer cost of repealing Obamacare. #fiscalhawks #thepathtoprosperity #adultsintheroom
It would be a shame to repeal the various Obamacare taxes and penalties that are dragging the economy into the dumpster.
Wow, $137 billion over 10 years. That's like Obama's deficit spending for...August.
The CBO says $350 billion. That's like what China is spending on renewable energy development in the next four years. Studies that don't assume a genuine "replace" element say as much as $3.1 trillion. Either way, it's money smartly spent.
Besides, the GOP doesn't want people to waste their time arguing about numbers. They're too modest to want the credit for saving the taxpayers money, which is why they've legally blocked the CBO from calculating the true cost of Obamacare's repeal.
And anyway, once PBS and the National Endowments get snuffed, the world's shrewdest businessman just has to identify and eliminate 29,999 more liberal boondoggles of equal cost to meet his stated budget reduction goal. Finally, we have grownups making serious policy choices.
The CBO top line is $137 billion; the $353 billion is taking from a scenario that the CBO recognizes is normally excluded. But since we're talking alternatives, I'll copy the next line from this report:
"Repeal of the ACA would raise economic output, mainly by boosting the supply of labor; the resulting increase in GDP is projected to average about 0.7 percent over the 2021–2025 period. Alone, those effects would reduce federal deficits by $216 billion over the 2016–2025 period, CBO and JCT estimate, mostly because of increased federal revenues."
Imagine that: increasing revenues by more people working than by taxation.
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/50252
Not exactly. $353 billion is the finding under the CBO's traditional scoring method. It's normally included, not excluded. The $137 billion figure is after applying the more speculative and less stable "dynamic scoring" model favored by Republicans, and that calculation was at the request of Sen. Mike Enzi. You'll never guess which Senator shot out a press release after the CBO report was issued.
But these are just dueling talking points. Whether it's $137B or $353B, the important thing is that we get absolutely nothing for the money.
Now, let's move on to serious fiscal reform, like foreclosing on "This Old House."
Yes, American taxpayers need to subsidize these selfless workers on public television.
http://www.therichest.com/celebnetworth/celeb/tv-personality/bob-vila-net-worth/
You know perfectly well that going after PBS is a patently frivolous and lazy sop to the dummies. It does nothing to address the deficit, most particularly in conjunction with Trump's stated opposition to trimming Social Security, Medicare or military spending.
But when you cheer for the monorail salesman, you may as well get your monorail.
I totally agree, but when will there ever be the slightest sliver of pain for piling trillions of dollars of debt onto future generations? Robert Samuelson writes the same annual article about how Washington can never cut Amtrak even though it's just an expensive subsidy to well-heeled businessmen on the Northeast Corridor.
I've been writing forever that entitlement spending will eventually crowd out everything we call "discretionary" spending. Well, let's start with Big Bird.
Well, let's start AND END with Big Bird.
Nah, I'm just teasing you. That's not true.
Because Big Bird is on HBO now.
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