Missing from the political theater passing as debate over raising the federal debt limit is any sort of specificity as to what spending cuts are being proposed. This reflects several factors, chief among them the fact that no one really knows.
Part of the problem is the medias aversion to numbers. Not always comfortable with numbers themselves, journalists also know one sure way to turn off their readers, listeners or viewers is to bombard them with millions, billions and trillions.
In addition, there have been countless different proposals put forth by members of both parties, in both houses of Congress and the president at different times and with different goals. It is doubtful anyone has kept them all straight.
Beyond that, the underlying math and politics are daunting. The simple truth is that every dollar spent by the federal government goes to someone and that someone has a say in all this. There is no painless or politically safe ways to cut the budget into balance.
Not long ago, Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Cortez, sent out a flyer in which he promised to protect Social Security and preserve Medicare while working to get our budget back on track with real debt and spending reduction. Those goals are probably in line with the majority of Congress and the American people.
It is just the arithmetic that refuses to go along. In his flyer which included the disclosure that This mailing was prepared, published and mailed at taxpayer expense Tipton included a breakdown of the federal budget. Using numbers from the Congressional Budget Office August 2010 Budget and Economic Outlook, it divides federal spending in several ways.
Roughly 61 percent is labeled Autopilot Spending. It consists of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, interest on the debt and other mandatory spending.
The other 39 percent is labeled Discretionary Spending. It breaks down into two parts; 20 percent of the total budget is defense while 19 percent is non-defense discretionary spending that is to say, everything else.
All the talk of cutting spending focuses on that 19 percent of the budget that includes the entire federal government outside of the Pentagon, interest and entitlements.
Various proposals tossed around in Washington have proposed cutting spending by anywhere from $1 trillion to $4 trillion, usually over 10 years. Using the numbers in Tiptons flyer, and assuming no growth in the budget, a 10-year, $4 trillion cut to non-defense discretionary spending would eliminate about two-thirds of all federal spending outside of defense and entitlements. A $1 trillion cut would take roughly $1 of every $6 from federal highway funds, the FBI, airports, education, homeland security, national parks, air traffic controllers, the Department of Agriculture and the Border Patrol.
Every one of those programs and agencies has a constituency.
We do not hear specifics on proposed cuts because there are not many. Any plan that offers meaningful deficit reduction but does not reform entitlements, cut defense spending or raise taxes cannot be specific because it is a fantasy.
And any politician proposing a workable solution to debt reduction does not want to be specific lest the voters back home find out how it will affect them. For to be workable, it must.
