Pat Buchanan: The Coming Age of Austerity

By Patrick J. Buchanan

“Are the good times really over for good?” asked Merle Haggard in his 1982 lament.

Then, the good times weren’t over. In fact, they were coming back, with the Reagan recovery, the renewal of the American spirit and the end of a Cold War that had consumed so much of our lives.

Yet whoever wins today, it is hard to be sanguine about the future.

The demographic and economic realities do not permit it.

Americans Would Rather Cut Services Than Raise Taxes to Balance Budget, Poll Shows

To ease surging budget deficits, Americans prefer cutting federal services to raising taxes by nearly 2-1 in a new poll. Yet there is little consensus on specific, meaningful steps -- and a wariness about touching two gargantuan programs, Social Security and Medicare.

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House Democrats Propose $7 Billion Budget Cut

Buffeted by deficit pressures, House Democratic leaders are proposing a $7 billion cut in President Barack Obama's budget for the next fiscal year.

Democratic aides said Wednesday that the cuts will be implemented as Democrats pass a short-term budget plan cutting deeper than Obama's proposed freeze of the annual operating budgets of domestic agencies.

The cut amounts to less than 1 percent of the more than $1.1 trillion proposed for agency budgets funded by lawmakers each year through the spending bills. The next fiscal year begins Oct. 1.

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Fun Facts about the House Democrats' Massive Spending

From National Center for Policy Analysis

House Minority Leader John Boehner has compiled a useful list of "fun facts" about the House Democrats' $825 billion "stimulus" bill.

For example:

• The House Democrats' bill will cost each and every household $6,700 additional debt, paid for by our children and grandchildren.

• The total cost of this one piece of legislation is almost as much as the annual discretionary budget for the entire federal government.

• President-elect Obama has said that his proposed stimulus legislation will create or save three million jobs; this means that this legislation will spend about $275,000 per job. The average household income in the United States is $50,000 a year.
  
  
• The House Democrats' bill provides enough spending -- $825 billion -- to give every man, woman, and child in America $2,700.
  
  
• $825 billion is enough to give every person living in poverty in the United States $22,000.
  
  
• $825 billion is enough to give every person in Ohio $72,000.
  

Although the House Democrats' proposal has been billed as a transportation and infrastructure investment package, in actuality only $30 billion of the bill -- or 3 percent - is for road and highway spending, says Boehner. A recent study from the Congressional Budget Office said that only 25 percent of infrastructure dollars can be spent in the first year, making the one year total less than $7 billion for infrastructure.

Almost one-third of the so called tax relief in the House Democrats' bill is spending in disguise, meaning that true tax relief makes up only 24 percent of the total package -- not the 40 percent that President-elect Obama had requested.

$825 billion is just the beginning -- many Capitol Hill Democrats want to spend even more taxpayer dollars on their "stimulus" plan, says Boehner.

Source: John Boehner, "Biggest Boondoggle in American History," Powerline.com, January 18, 2009.

For text:

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/01/022586.php

For more on Federal Spending & Budget Issues:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_Category=25