Emergency Deficit Spending Surpasses $230B... since *February*

[Pangloss]

ABC News ran an interesting piece today about how "emergency" spending has exceeded $230 billion since February. Why is this date range significant? Because in February Congress and the President passed PAYGO, which was designed to stop deficit spending. Ah, but it's emergency spending, right?

 

Or is it?

 

The emergencies Congress has funded since President Obama signed the Pay As You Go Act include:

 

- $20 billion for highway construction

 

- $54 million for tax breaks for TV and movie production

 

- $67 million in payments to Filipino World War II vets

 

- $15 million in aid to the Congo

 

Even many of the items that seem urgent (like highway construction in light of our declining infrastructure) don't sound like "emergencies", at least in the sense of not having to pay for them. Just charge it to the credit card, right? It's not as if we really need that credit line for anything, and it doesn't hurt, so just rack up some more debt.

 

I think it's even worse than a simple tendency to reach into that credit line to take care of pressing matters. In my opinion this is also a problem of politics. Once you put a party in power they want to stay there just as badly as the opposition wants to remove them. There is no reason for the party in power to back off the spending spree. They simply have no incentive to do so.

 

The American people have to stand up and explain to them that this sort of business as usual is no longer acceptable. I'm not saying that some (perhaps even all) of these expenses aren't worth doing. But we need to start behaving more responsibly, and we need to start doing that right now.

 

I believe that the party that accomplishes that -- EITHER party -- will ultimately be recognized by the people as the more responsible party, and the one better suited to run this country.

[bascule]

I believe that the party that accomplishes that -- EITHER party -- will ultimately be recognized by the people as the more responsible party, and the one better suited to run this country.

 

Well, to put it in perspective, there's the party that racked up approximately $10 trillion in debt, the Republicans, and the party that's responsible for the other $3 trillion, the Democrats. In the exceedingly unlikely event that the Republicans managed to balance the budget, anyone giving them carte blanche is still rather myopic.

[Pangloss]

Great, now how do we stop Democrats from simply repeating the process, when they're showing no sign of doing anything differently?

[Mr Skeptic]

But we need to start behaving more responsibly, and we need to start doing that right now.

 

I believe that the party that accomplishes that -- EITHER party -- will ultimately be recognized by the people as the more responsible party, and the one better suited to run this country.

 

I think they'll be recognized as the party that got kicked out of office... Unless, like you said, we the people actually realize it is necessary despite being painful.