(no subject)
Bruce Bartlett, over at Capital Gains & Games, raises the possibility that the new Congress, with its enhanced compliment of Tea Party-type Republicans, might be willing to bring about an immediate fiscal crisis by refusing to raise the federal government's statutory debt limit.
And actually, if the Tea Party folks are indeed serious, that's exactly what they should do. By holding the debt limit hostage, they can force a complete renegotiation of the 2011 budget from a position, not merely of strength, but of basically absolute power.
As of the end of November, it looked like the federal government would need to borrow an additional $1.2 trillion for fiscal 2011 (which, by the way, runs from October, 2010 to September, 2011). But the Treasury only has statutory authority to borrow another $0.5 trillion. So unless the Congress takes an affirmative action in the near future, the Obama Administration will need to find a way to scale back federal spending by something like $700 billion over the ten remaining months in the fiscal year.
Actually, it's probably worse than that, since the November figures I'm looking at don't reflect the effects of the December "tax deal," which cut the taxes of the rich in exchange for cutting social security taxes. (Boggle.) Of course, both ends of the deal increase the federal government's negative cash flow, making the debt limit even more awkward. (And that's another reason the "deal" was widely perceived as a total defeat for the Democrats: they failed to get a debt limit increase as part of the package. Oops.)
So, because I'm such a helpful sort of fellow, I thought I'd lay out a picture of the sort of cuts that keeping the debt limit unchanged would require. As a quantitative benchmark, I'm showing the fiscal 2010 total spending in each of the areas I'm "proposing" to cut. These total $864.8 billion -- but two months of the fiscal year are already gone, so they correspond to cuts of about $721 billion on a 10-month basis.
Legislative Architect of the Capitol 498
Library of Congress 1,840
Government Printing Office 60
Agriculture Abolish USDA 129,454
Education Abolish ED 92,858
Energy Energy Programs 15,224
Environmental 8,665
HHS Medicaid 272,771
Children's Health Ins Fund 7,888
Children & Families 56,370
Medicare Prescription Drugs 59,564
Housing Abolish HUD 60,143
Labor Employment & Training 7,684
OSHA 534
Mine Safety & Health Admin 346
State Int'l Orgs, Refugee Assistance 11,139
Transportation Highway Admin 63,097
Transit Admin 13,088
Railroad Admin 2,671
Independent EPA 11,008
International Assistance 20,038
NASA 18,906
SBA 6,126
Broadcasting BOG 733
Americorps 1,034
Corp for Public Broadcasting 506
EEOC 356
Legal Services Corp 416
NEA 183
NEH 157
Institue of Museum & Library Svcs 263
NLRB 272
Smithsonian Institution 923 Well, that was fun! What does that mean in English?
Well, I've completely abolished the Department of Education (goodbye student loans!) and the Department of Agriculture (which includes farm price supports, food and nutrition programs like food stamps and WIC, and, by strange coincidence, the national forests).
I've gutted the Department of Energy, so it becomes basically the Department of Nuclear Weapons. I've also terminated all of the DOE's environmental clean up efforts (sorry, Hanford neighbors!).
In the human services (in addition to the food programs from USDA), I've completely eliminated Medicaid, the entire Department of Housing and Urban Development (so much for low-income housing), essentially all of the income support programs in HHS (that includes "new welfare," a.k.a. TANF, plus SSI, low-income heating assistance program (LIHEAP), and many others), as well as all of the employment and training programs in the Department of Labor.
I've wiped out most of the major regulatory agencies (the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA), the Mine Safety & Health Administration, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (EEOC)). (You'll be pleased to hear that I've allowed the Food & Drug Administration along with transportation safety agencies to live. Ill-maintained aircraft and poorly-tested stents might hurt rich, old people, after all....)
I've also wiped out a bunch of agencies that conservatives hate, and that mainly serve to make America a better kind of place: the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Americorps, and the Legal Services Corporation. And, while we're ransacking our cultural heritage, I thought I'd abolish the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution.
NASA is gone. So are the Small Business Administration (SBA) and all of the grant programs run by the Department of Transportation (highway, transit and rail projects). Finally, the Medicare prescription drug benefit is abolished.
Now, here's the thing: it just takes forty-one senators, or a majority in the House, to force these or other cuts of similar magnitude. That gives the GOP -- and its Tea Party wing -- immense bargaining power. It's going to be interesting to see how they use it.
And actually, if the Tea Party folks are indeed serious, that's exactly what they should do. By holding the debt limit hostage, they can force a complete renegotiation of the 2011 budget from a position, not merely of strength, but of basically absolute power.
As of the end of November, it looked like the federal government would need to borrow an additional $1.2 trillion for fiscal 2011 (which, by the way, runs from October, 2010 to September, 2011). But the Treasury only has statutory authority to borrow another $0.5 trillion. So unless the Congress takes an affirmative action in the near future, the Obama Administration will need to find a way to scale back federal spending by something like $700 billion over the ten remaining months in the fiscal year.
Actually, it's probably worse than that, since the November figures I'm looking at don't reflect the effects of the December "tax deal," which cut the taxes of the rich in exchange for cutting social security taxes. (Boggle.) Of course, both ends of the deal increase the federal government's negative cash flow, making the debt limit even more awkward. (And that's another reason the "deal" was widely perceived as a total defeat for the Democrats: they failed to get a debt limit increase as part of the package. Oops.)
So, because I'm such a helpful sort of fellow, I thought I'd lay out a picture of the sort of cuts that keeping the debt limit unchanged would require. As a quantitative benchmark, I'm showing the fiscal 2010 total spending in each of the areas I'm "proposing" to cut. These total $864.8 billion -- but two months of the fiscal year are already gone, so they correspond to cuts of about $721 billion on a 10-month basis.
Legislative Architect of the Capitol 498
Library of Congress 1,840
Government Printing Office 60
Agriculture Abolish USDA 129,454
Education Abolish ED 92,858
Energy Energy Programs 15,224
Environmental 8,665
HHS Medicaid 272,771
Children's Health Ins Fund 7,888
Children & Families 56,370
Medicare Prescription Drugs 59,564
Housing Abolish HUD 60,143
Labor Employment & Training 7,684
OSHA 534
Mine Safety & Health Admin 346
State Int'l Orgs, Refugee Assistance 11,139
Transportation Highway Admin 63,097
Transit Admin 13,088
Railroad Admin 2,671
Independent EPA 11,008
International Assistance 20,038
NASA 18,906
SBA 6,126
Broadcasting BOG 733
Americorps 1,034
Corp for Public Broadcasting 506
EEOC 356
Legal Services Corp 416
NEA 183
NEH 157
Institue of Museum & Library Svcs 263
NLRB 272
Smithsonian Institution 923 Well, that was fun! What does that mean in English?
Well, I've completely abolished the Department of Education (goodbye student loans!) and the Department of Agriculture (which includes farm price supports, food and nutrition programs like food stamps and WIC, and, by strange coincidence, the national forests).
I've gutted the Department of Energy, so it becomes basically the Department of Nuclear Weapons. I've also terminated all of the DOE's environmental clean up efforts (sorry, Hanford neighbors!).
In the human services (in addition to the food programs from USDA), I've completely eliminated Medicaid, the entire Department of Housing and Urban Development (so much for low-income housing), essentially all of the income support programs in HHS (that includes "new welfare," a.k.a. TANF, plus SSI, low-income heating assistance program (LIHEAP), and many others), as well as all of the employment and training programs in the Department of Labor.
I've wiped out most of the major regulatory agencies (the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA), the Mine Safety & Health Administration, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (EEOC)). (You'll be pleased to hear that I've allowed the Food & Drug Administration along with transportation safety agencies to live. Ill-maintained aircraft and poorly-tested stents might hurt rich, old people, after all....)
I've also wiped out a bunch of agencies that conservatives hate, and that mainly serve to make America a better kind of place: the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Americorps, and the Legal Services Corporation. And, while we're ransacking our cultural heritage, I thought I'd abolish the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution.
NASA is gone. So are the Small Business Administration (SBA) and all of the grant programs run by the Department of Transportation (highway, transit and rail projects). Finally, the Medicare prescription drug benefit is abolished.
Now, here's the thing: it just takes forty-one senators, or a majority in the House, to force these or other cuts of similar magnitude. That gives the GOP -- and its Tea Party wing -- immense bargaining power. It's going to be interesting to see how they use it.