02-10-2012, 09:25 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra..._blog.html
I hope that Romney doesn't get a "pass" before the election on having to say how much he'll cut from what departments to meet the fiscal goals he has set out.
Romney has, essentially, made four significant fiscal promises: He has pledged to cap federal spending at 20 percent of GDP. He has pledged to cut taxes to about 17 percent of GDP. He has pledged to a floor on defense spending at 4 percent of GDP. And he has pledged to balance the budget.
So let’s add it all up: Romney has to cut federal spending down to 17 percent of GDP. Federal spending is currently at 24 percent of GDP, and the Congressional Budget Office predicts that it will be around 22 percent for the next decade. For comparison’s sake, Paul Ryan’s budget would keep spending above 20 percent of GDP for at least the next 20 years.
That’s a lot of numbers, so here’s the bottom line: Romney is proposing to cut more than twice as much from the budget as Ryan. And Ryan’s budget, as you’ll remember, was already quite austere.
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Put aside whether you consider cuts of this magnitude desirable. Romney has not put forward any specific plans under which they would be achievable. And that’s for good reason: The sort of specific program cuts required to match these numbers would seem incredibly draconian if put to paper. But CBPP drew up some illustrative options.
If you assume the cuts are distributed equally across all domestic spending programs, Romney’s numbers imply cutting more than $500 billion from food stamps and related programs for the poorest Americans, cutting $2.3 trillion from Social Security, cutting $174 billion from veteran’s benefits and so forth.
I hope that Romney doesn't get a "pass" before the election on having to say how much he'll cut from what departments to meet the fiscal goals he has set out.
