Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute is a bit concerned that the debate about raising the federal debt ceiling has focused on the size of the debt-reduction package. He shares those concerns with National Review Online readers:
All sorts of numbers are being tossed out: $4 trillion over twelve years? $6 trillion over ten years? $3 trillion over two years?
But focusing on dollars — even trillions of dollars — may be setting Republicans up for a fall.
After all, we’ve heard promises of spending cuts before. Remember the deal over the continuing resolution that kept the government open back in April? That deal was supposed to include $61 billion in spending cuts, but, in reality, it was crammed full of gimmicks such as counting savings from spending that hadn’t occurred in the previous year or not funding programs that actually didn’t exist. In the end, the actual reduction in spending was less than $8 billion.
And President Obama, in his most recent budget proposal, counted interest savings and the elimination of tax breaks (“spending in the tax code”) as reductions in spending. They might show up that way on a balance sheet, but that sort of budget cutting does very little to reduce the size and burden of government — which is what this debate should really be about.
