Yeah, I know, dog bites man, but I still enjoyed this exchange with Bernanke:
The entire premise of his question is absurd. The budget for FY2010 exceeds $3.8 trillion, which means that we don’t have to eliminate “half the ledger sheet” in order to close a $1.3 trillion deficit. We only need to eliminate a third of the ledger sheet. That $3.8 trillion, by the way, is $1.1 trillion more than the last budget from a Republican Congress, FY2007. If we returned to the FY2007 budget, we’d be almost all of the way there just by eliminating all of the spending increases inserted after Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid took charge of the budgeting process.
Oh, but that would be the end of the world as we know it.
Actually, the part of that exchange that I think was notable was the Congressman’s arrogant snark at the end. Must be nice to be an economist. Like, oh pity poor responsible us, forced to make all these hard choices while you just carp and criticize and nastily point out that 2 + 2 = 4 regardless of how many votes we got in the last election.
That would be barely tolerable in a public servant if they actually did make the tough choices. But they don’t. Indeed, here’s this arrogant snot spending his constituent’s money sitting in a totally pointless hearing trying to score pity points on cablte TV instead of, say, poring over the budget books back in his office trying to figure out the right way to snip $100 million.
Ultimately it’s our fault for allowing them to be our ‘leaders’ rather than the public servants they are supposed to be.
Good Idea Carl,
Now let’s run the numbers.
You want the Congress to snip 1.3 Trillion. That’s an Okay Goal.
And I’m going to assume you prohibit any tax increases a priori.
And you want them to think about cuts at the $100 Million level.
That’s 1.3 Million decisions.
Let’s say it takes 5 minutes to ponder a decision, get some input from
your wizardly staff, and make the call.
How long would that take?
100,000 Hours.
Clearly beyond any one person’s ability.
Now could 50 people dedicate themselves to this? Sure.
Or could the GOP House members spend 1/4 of their time voting cuts up?
Sure.
So the question is why not?
The GOP spent 8 years supporting Bush’s Spending mania, and
6 years in Lockstep with his mania.
Why didn’t they do any of that then?
Why don’t they propose serious cuts to get us to a balanced budget now?
Heck PJ ORourke did it in his book. Has anyone in the Congress proposed
a solid plan to a balanced budget now?
Jack, you’ve figured it out! It’s not possible to cut spending! We have absolutely no control! There’s no time! It can’t be done! …and I haven’t run out of exclamation points yet!!!!!!
NUMBERS DON’T LIE… people do (often with numbers.)
Another data point in today’s CAN’T DO ATTITUDE ™
Pop quiz, jackie; who said this?
“$100 million here, $100 million there, pretty soon even in Washington it adds up to real money.”
I have an idea that maybe Jack would like…let’s simply start by reducing all spending to 2000 levels, the year before GWB stepped in. We’ve had pretty much zero inflation for the last decade.
That won’t take quite so many man-hours to accomplish, it will easily accomplish the reduction goal of 1.3 trillion, plus it will undo absolutely everything that nasty old GWB and his runaway legislature inacted while they were recklessly in control.
Hey no problem
Cut the budget to the 2000 spend line. okay,,,,
1) it won’t balance the budget unless you revert the bush tax cuts.
2) the DoD needs to cut $300 Billion or more in spending or it has to
end the war in Iraq and afghanistan.
3) The Departent of Homeland security goes away
4) Because the boomers are retiring SSA and medicare spending are up,
What do we do about that?
You want the Congress to snip 1.3 Trillion. That’s an Okay Goal.
And I’m going to assume you prohibit any tax increases a priori.
And you want them to think about cuts at the $100 Million level.
That’s 1.3 Million decisions.
More like 13,000. Rolling back the spending insanity of the last year or so will take care of most of that 1.3 trillion.
Seeing how the 2007 budget itself wasn’t all that small, I’m thinking we’ll need to cut way more than 1.3 trillion to avoid the crash.
Jack, reverting back to 2000 would indeed revert the Bush tax cuts, we can easily find 300 billion if we would stack rank our spending priorities and agree not to spend more than we take in, I would LOVE for the Department of Homeland Security Theater to go away (that has got to produce a lot of the 300 billion we are looking for), and I would eliminate Medicare and Social Security for everyone 55 and under, call it a failed experiment, and fulfill our commitment to continue these programs for those over 55 for the remainder of their lifetimes. That will be painful but far cheaper than trying to sustain the ponzi scheme that currently exists.
What are your ideas?
Jack, you ignorant slut.
First of all, $1.3 trillion divided by $100 million is 13,000, not 1.3 million. You’re allowed to use a calculator, you know. If you can understand what the little buttons do. Secondly, there are 435 relevant Congressmen, since budget bills originate in the House, so even if we accepted your ludicrous misread of my comment and assume it’s only possible to cut the budget in $100 million steps and that the work can be done in some weird parallel chain-gang fashion, that’s 13,000 divided by 435 equals a whopping 30 decisions per Congressman. You think the average Congressman can make 30 sensible decisions over the course of a full year?
No, neither do I.
But in any event Republicans don’t introduce bills for spending cuts because they’re in the minority. They can’t introduce any bills without the approval of Madame Speaker. And any substantive proposals they might float off the floor are certainly not going to be reported by the whores in the media. Which explains why you know zip about them.
And finally, what’s with this bizarre tu quoque argument, that if the Republican majority in 2001-2006 overspent, it’s therefore totally cool if the Democratic majority since 2006 has overspent by a factor of four or five times more?
Does this work in any other area of your life? If your wife farts in bed, do you feel free to take a dump on the sheets?
Jim
Your ideas are worth putting on the table, you left off the big problem
of the Wars in Iraq and AFghanistan.
that’s about 150 Billion in Round Numbers.
the DoD budget in 2000 was only $400 Billion.
Where does that money come from, or do we stop the war?
I would love to see DHS eliminated.
and, yeah, I screwed up the math on how you divide 1.3 EE 12 by 1 EE 8,
had i done it in Scientific notation, i’d have gotten it right, i switched units
and shifted the wrong direction.
That happens.
If Jim is willing to revert the Bush tax cuts back to the 2000 baseline,
i’d say between the reversion of budget, and increased revenues it only
leaves the war and SSA as the issues.
If Jim can suggest a solution on the war, i’d suggest the simpler solution on
SSA would be kick up the retirement age to 69, if you work a desk job or light job (Retail, office, Medical, professional) but be generous to people in physical industries (Construction, mining, factory,) who may be disabled
by age 59. Lift the cap on FICA taxes to $100M/year in income.
that would fix Social security.
@Jack Lee…I don’t like the war either, but I prefer fighting over there instead of fighting over here. Our current administration with their published withdrawal timelines is seriously undermining our troops ability to succeed in their mission. Perhaps if Obama or Hillary had a clue about foreign policy we could reduce the overall costs of the war by winning, instead of saving money now by drawing down yet failing to eliminate the enemy. That simply means we fight them again tomorrow.
The federal budget in 2000 was 1.8 trillion, and it is 3.8 trillion this year. Virtually no inflation for a decade, yet our federal budget grows by 111% during that time period. The cost of the war is not our primary budget problem, Jack. Our primary budget issues are Ponzi schemes disguised as entitlement programs and an out of control federal government.
Jim
Let’s just take your baseline scenario.
Roll back the bush tax cuts, roll back spending to 1.8 Trillion.
Okay
The War Spending is running $200 Billion a year, where in the 1.8 Trillion
do you make cuts to get there, and how would you make that cuts.?
Also, there is $2 Trillion in additional spending, i’ll make a guess that it’s
Increased Interest payments on Debts already run up, it’s increased Social Security spend as the baby boomers age and increased medicare spending.
How do you cut that? Be specific.
Also bear in mind that even if you dump SSA and Medicare for the Post Boomer generation, then you don’t see any savings for at least a decade.
The only way to get savings on SSA and Medicare is to make cuts now.
Do you want to cut monthly benefits to the Elderly and Disabled?
Do you want to limit Medicare benefits? If so, do you want to establish
Death Panels?
No, it’s your turn, Jack. I’ve put out several ideas, and you are a broken record. We can’t have a conversation if all you do is ask questions.