http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12588501
We're steadily approaching Obama's proposed doeadline of March 4th for what he believes are necessary tax cuts to keep government offices running. Obama's cuts are to total over 1 trillion dollars over the next decade, the majority of these come as spending cuts in order to keep the government funded and operating. Dems have responded positively to the plan, which Obama is calling a "down payment" to our debt crises.
There is an overview of the cuts outlined at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/overview.
Thoughts?
We've got to start somewhere. Although $1 trillion in the next decade doesn't seem like much when the deficit is pushing $14 trillion?
ReplyDeleteI'm not thrilled about the elimination of graduate student in school loan subsidy but to be honest I don't know what that even means exactly.
The very last line of the second link said, "Taxpayers will only pay the programs if they produce results." I am curious as to how "results" will be measured.
While the proposed budget plan only cuts the deficit by 1 trillion over the next decade (and this does not seem enough) what caught my eye was the fact that this does not include war savings. We should keep in mind that with the pledge to withdraw troops and a slight move towards a observatory foreign policy in recent times, the war costs/spending should be significantly reduced over the next decade. That should also help (in my opinion significantly help) with the deficit gap.
ReplyDeleteAlso, going off of Dave's comment about how the program success will be measured, the last comment is something that, I feel, delves right into the heart of our class. We all know that these projects work as a leaky bucket, we all know that measuring a success in welfare (govt projects) is hurdled by ambiguities, and we all know that there will always be differing opinions and success is usually a spectrum and not an absolute. All in all, Dave has a very valid question!
ReplyDeleteI agree with Dave in that I do not feel as if $1 trillion will be enough to remedy the budget deficit, even if it is a start.
ReplyDeleteI also think that reducing $1 trillion does not seem like a very big step towards eliminating our country's $14+ trillion deficit total. However, it was nice to see that the budget would bring defense spending to zero real growth over the next few years. It was also nice to see goals for innovative long-term projects and investments that would not only help to rebuild our country in the long run, but would provide hundreds of thousands of jobs in the short run. Like I mentioned in a previous comment, one of the projects that I find to be most appealing is bringing access of high speed rail to 80 percent of Americans within 25 years.
ReplyDeleteI agree with others in the class, reducing $1 trillion over the next ten years does not seem like that much at all. I would even think that over that time period our debt would actually grow more than that trillion dollar reduction. I also think it would be great to see access of high speed rail to 80 percent of Americans within the next 25 years, but what about all the other infrastructure across the country that is falling apart? I simply don't think that we have that kind of money to not only fix our current infrastructure problems, but to build more innovative technologies too.
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