Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Rand Paul on Obama and cutting the budget

Rand Paul announces his plan to cut $500 billion from the budget and responds to the drunken sailor now posing as the President:

3 comments:

Thomas M. Cothran said...

It's important to remember the reason why the surplus turned into a deficit: the primary cause was not increases in entitlement spending. Tax cuts are by far the primary cause (accounting for more than half of the spending that led to the deficit), and increases in defense-related spending are second. Entitlement spending comes in third at 15% (and remember much of that is from Republican initiatives, such as the Bush increases in Medicare, which were not offset by higher taxes).

It's also important to remember that much Democratic legislation actually had the fund-raising mechanisms in the bill, in such a way that it actually reduced the deficit.

Thomas M. Cothran said...

That CBO data is from 2005, and the newer data on the effect of tax cuts looks even worse.

Art said...

For the better part of a generation, Republicans have been willing to spend my kids' money on their excesses.

It's amusing that the one tangible, unilateral thing* that Paul could do to reduce the deficit (if by only a smattering) is the thing that he would never, ever, ever do.

(*That is, of course, forswearing taxpayers' dollars in his own practice.)