CBO Issues Scoring On Revised Boehner Plan: $951 Billion In Cuts
The Congressional Budget Office has released its scoring of the revised Boehner Plan, and Philip Klein summarizes:
- Cut and cap spending by $917 billion over 10 years – that’s more than the $900 billion debt hike;
- Cut $22 billion in spending for FY2012 and hold spending below FY2010 levels until FY2016;
- Continue reducing discretionary spending each year compared to President Obama’s budget (by $96 billion in 2012, $118 billion in 2013, $115 billion in 2014, $117 billion in 2015, and so on); and
- Require Congress to draft proposals that produce reductions of at least $1.8 trillion that help protect programs like Medicare and Social Security from bankruptcy.
That comes out to spending cuts of $915 billion over 10 years (the first draft was $851 billion) and cuts in the FY 2012 deficit of $22 billion
Here’s the letter:
Tooth fairy, where are you?????
According to Yale’s Ray Fair’s models, stabilizing the U. S. deficit as a percentage of GDP will require $650 billion per year in some combination of additional revenue or spending cuts and that ignores demographic issues. If he’s anywhere near close, all of the plans that have been proposed to date are woefully inadequate.
Additionally, according to his models, the later you start, the more it takes to stabilize the situation.
@Ozark Hillbilly: The Tooth Fairy is out rounding up the unicorns to go gather the necessary wagon loads of pixie dust to make this thing work. And I bid him Godspeed!
OBTW: We are still up on the fact that at current revenue levels (that is, barring an amazing economic recovery that raises revenues by putting nearly everyone to work, and creates calls to lower taxes on the rich to help them stimulate the economy even more because we can now afford it) the deficit will grow by about $15 trillion over those same 10 years. We get this, right?
If a public company tried to whitewash its books along these lines its CFO would be frog marched to prison for securities fraud.