Saturday, February 5, 2011

The National Budget

Here's where the rummer meets the road, or as we say in flyover country, where the tea meets the cup. The initial budget proposal from John Boehner proposes $100B in budget cuts. This proposal has to get through at least 2 committees before it gets to the house floor, and at least one of them wants to "prorate" this to $32B on account of 1/4 of the year having already passed.

Last I looked, 3/4 of $100B was $75B, so there must be some FICA withholding or something included in this calculation.

Frankly, I'm disappointed. In addition to the monies it actually has, the government is proposing to spend some $1,500B it hasn't got, and put this on our tabs. That would be an extra $5000 from every person in the country. But wait, everybody doesn't pay taxes. In fact, only the employed pay taxes, and the current employment figures suggest that only 64.2% of the population is actually employed. And that number is dropping.

At this point, I conclude the Republicans aren't really serious about the spending, being willing to play carefully around the edges, but avoid making any serious cuts that might offend their friends, the Democrats. Until I see cuts in the $750B range, I'm going to be losing a lot of faith in the party.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

If you look around you'll find more than a few of the employed don't pay any income tax either.