Legal Commentary

The Norquist Strategy: The GOP's Opening Offer - $2.5 Trillion In Spending Cuts

By Big Tent Democrat

It begins:

A number of the House GOP’s leading conservative members on Thursday will announce legislation that would cut $2.5 trillion over 10 years, which will be by far the most ambitious and far-reaching proposal by the new majority to cut federal government spending. [. . . The] “Spending Reduction Act” would eliminate such things as the U.S. Agency for International Development and its $1.39 billion annual budget, [. . .] the $1.5 billion annual subsidy for Amtrak, $2.5 billion in high speed rail grants [. . .] and it would cut in half to $7.5 billion the federal travel budget.

But the program eliminations and reductions would account for only $330 billion of the $2.5 trillion in cuts. The bulk of the cuts would come from returning non-defense discretionary spending – which is currently $670 billion out of a $3.8 trillion budget for the 2011 fiscal year – to the 2006 level of $496.7 billion, through 2021.

This is, of course, just a scare document, intended to move the conversation in the Norquist direction. When Boehner comes in with a lower spending cuts number, he'll be "the reasonable one." Boehner will "negotiate" with Demint. Who will Obama negotiate with? Oh BTW, extension of the Bush tax cuts cost more in revenue ($4 trillion) to the government than the amount of the draconian cuts the GOP will propose today ($3.3 trillion.) What is interesting about this proposal though is what it does not touch - defense spending, Social Security or Medicare. How about that?

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on January 20, 2011 (boomark / email).