Budget politics

By The Hawk Eye

As it turned out, those historic cuts President Barack Obama recently negotiated with House Speaker John Boehner and Senate President Harry Reid weren't as consequential as advertised.

Headlines recently trumpeted the vote as ushering in $38 billion in cuts. But when the Congressional Budget Office tallied up the totals, they amounted to a paltry $352 million - about a buck for every American counted in the latest Census.

Rep. Allen B. West, a freshman Republican, one of about a quarter of the House Republicans to vote against the bill, summed up the feelings of many in the tea party crowd when he said the budget cuts amounted to a “raindrop in an ocean.”

Boehner rejected that notion, explaining a cut is a cut is a cut. He also pointed out they realigned the budget baseline and stand to save up to $315 billion over 10 years.

The Washington Post explained the CBO's analysis, saying, “the problem - in the murky mathematics of the federal budget - is that not all `spending' is really spending.”

Some of the “cuts” actually were agreements, say, not to buy an aircraft carrier six years from now.

But Republicans - and Americans - need not despair. And in this off election year, it's important that Congress recompose itself and cobble together a budget before the new fiscal year starts in October. It would be irresponsible to wrangle far into the next budget year.

Despite Republicans' calls for deep, deep cuts, the next budget surely will reflect a mix of cuts with tax hikes.

The showdown on the budget over the past month revealed an unspoken truth folded deep within the document Republicans are reluctant to recognize: Americans like their government programs. They just aren't willing to pay for them. When the choice is reduced to either paying for them or doing without, we think Americans will pony up.

Members of both parties should remember the country enjoyed surplus budgets 15 years ago. They disappeared after the Bush tax cuts and after America's plan for short wars in Afghanistan and Iraq following the 9/11 terrorist attacks bogged down and there was no plan to pay for them.

As the CBO audit shows, the federal budget is complex. Things are not always as they seem. But this much is certain: Ending our wars and ending the Bush tax cuts will go a long way to resolving deficits that everybody agrees are unsustainable.