Hey, it's "big numbers to make your head hurt" Friday!
Setting the stage for another showdown over government spending, top Senate Democrats rejected the House Republicans' new budget proposal Thursday, but said they were ruling out a government shutdown.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's plan to slash $74 billion from the federal budget “unworkable” and “more draconian than we originally anticipated,” but said he would not consider a government shutdown “under any circumstances.”
Good lord. $74 billion is "draconian" and "unworkable"? That's not even 5 percent of the projected deficit, never mind the $3.834 trillion budget.
Comments
Our elected representatives just do not live in reality. Decades ago I was debating with others how to yank the chain on these people. The only idea that seemed very workable was for every working person to take two weeks off without pay. This has a dramatic affect on two programs; Social Security and Medicare where their revenues would drop by nearly 4%.
The less impact would be on the general budget where 60 to 70& of all workers pay no federal income tax. However, with two weeks off without pay, the last two weeks of dollars is not taxed at about 10%.
Would people do this, no? So we are left with elected representatives who will not do what is right and a population who will not vote the idiots out. We are our own worst enemies.
If the cuts were applied with an even hand, this would still be "the largest one-year reductions in decades," to follow your links.
The problem is that they aren't. It's like refusing to change the oil in your car but continuing to buy gasoline. Eventually, you're going to have to buy a new engine, and that's far more expensive that the oil.
When you audit tax returns, most taxpayers being audited end up paying a trivial amount of extra taxes, or even get a refund of extra taxes paid, but enough tax cheats are caught that $1 paid for auditors returns $3 in taxes. Despite that, the proposed cut slashes the IRS budget a lot.
At the same time, it doesn't begin to touch the vast amounts of welfare we're giving other countries in the form of the American military. It seems vastly unfair that Ford cars should carry the tax burden to provide a military defense for Kia and Hyundai - and that's 62% of the federal budget.
The Republican proposal is like the laid-off worker who tightens his belt by cutting back on milk and vegetables for the kids, while spending as much as even on liquor and tobacco. It's not very conservative nor responsible to do that.