How much do you know about the budget? Take a quiz! Each statement by a political figure has a rating (True - Mostly True - Half True - Barely True - False). See how many you get right! 1. Barack Obama: If there’s a government shutdown, "people don’t get their Social Security checks." Spoiler "Ultimately, the law and history suggest that it’s likely that checks will go out, though it’s not a certainty. On balance, we rate Obama’s statement Barely True." Article. 2. Dennis Kucinich: "One of the biggest causes of our soaring debt and economic insecurity ends up being Pentagon spending. The budget for the Pentagon consumes more than half of our discretionary spending." Spoiler "Discretionary spending on the military has been trending up for more than a decade. From 2001 to 2010, it increased by 71 percent -- almost three times the rate of increase in domestic discretionary spending, which rose about 24 percent." Article. 3. Rand Paul: The federal government "can cut all of the non-military discretionary spending and not balance the budget." Spoiler "So the government would have a trillion-dollar-plus deficit in 2011 even without spending anything on non-security discretionary spending." Article. 4. John Boehner: "Over the last two years since President Obama has taken office, the federal government has added 200,000 new federal jobs." Spoiler "All told, we find that Boehner’s 200,000 number is way off. We rate it False." Article. 5. Barack Obama: Under the White House’s budget proposal, "we will not be adding more to the national debt" by the middle of the decade. Spoiler "We think the president’s statement is likely to mislead a lot of Americans about what his budget would do. So we rate Obama’s statement False. UPDATE: Shortly after we posted this article, the White House responded to an earlier request for comment, arguing that Obama was not referring to actual dollars but to the fact that the budget will not increase the debt as a share of the economy. While it’s true that the debt as a proportion of GDP – at least when adjusted for financial assets held by the government – would fall slightly between 2013 and 2017 (from 67.7 percent to 66.8 percent), that's not the explanation Obama gave in the news conference. Our rating is unchanged." Article. 6. Mark Warner (Democrat senator from Virginia): "The U.S. loses more on tax breaks than it collects in personal income taxes. " Spoiler "Warner says the U.S. gives up more in income tax breaks than it receives in income tax revenues. Anyway you dice the figures, he’s right. We rate his statement: True." Article. 7. Bobby Scott (Democrat representative from Virginia): The tax-cut deal "adds more than $800 billion to the deficit over two years -- more than the cost of TARP and more than the cost of the Recovery Act" and about the same as health care reform. Spoiler "He’s right on TARP, right on health care reform, and off by a tad on the Stimulus -- perhaps because the cost estimate of the act recently changed." Article. 8. Ricard Lugar (Republican senator from Indiana): "Eliminating earmarks does not reduce spending." Spoiler "Indirectly, earmarks may have an I'll-scratch-your-back-if-you-scratch-mine effect that pushes spending upward. Under the status quo, however, our experts agreed that Lugar is largely correct -- ending earmarks won't directly reduce spending, only re-direct it. There are other plausible reasons to advocate for an earmark ban, such as ending unseemly horse-trading with taxpayer dollars. But without a thorough overhaul of the budgeting process, saving money directly isn't one of them. We rate Lugar's statement Mostly True." Article. . So ... did you know all of them? Some of them?
This is wrong. From their own article... This means that discretionary defense spending can barely be above 15% of the total deficit. However their math looks wrong because if you actually divide 677 billion by 3.5 trillion, you get 20%. I'm all for cutting defense spending, but lies like this don't help anyone understand the problem. The majority of the budget is mandatory welfare spending. If the article is to be believed, we could cut all discretionary spending and still not balance the budget. Since "the government would have a trillion-dollar-plus deficit in 2011 even without spending anything on non-security discretionary spending" and "Discretionary defense outlays ... were $689 billion"
Thanks for posting it the way you did. I missed 1 of the 8: the eliminating earmarks one. Interesting stuff, will research more into this when I get done with work.
I know the difference, but I may have made an error somewhere. If I made an error, point it out to me.
This one is sort of misleading. Technically, yes, eliminating earmarks doesn't reduce spending. But you can easily just cut the authorization by that amount. For example, right now, it's: Step 1: Authorize $1 MM for some department Step 2: Say $300k should be spent on X. (technically the earmark) It doesn't cut the budget if you just cut out Step #2. But if you no longer want to do #2, you can easily just authorize $700k instead of the original $1MM, and that WOULD cut the budget. When the American public thinks of "cutting earmarks", they assume that money wouldn't be spent. It's only in budgetese that this isn't the case.
Kucinich's statement was that discretionary defense spending was more than half of all discretionary spending, not more than half of the total deficit: So if discretionary defense is $689 billion and discretionary non-defense is $677 billion, then the former is more than half of the total of the two. Whether it is "one of the biggest causes of our soaring debt and economic insecurity" I guess is more debatable.
This is the point I was arguing. If defense spending is 15 or 20% of the budget, then it is not the biggest cause of our debt.
But he didn't say it was the biggest cause, he said it was one of the biggest causes. Given that, for example, Social Security is running a surplus at the moment, it's easy to see how one can come to that conclusion despite the fact that other programs take up a greater percentage of the total budget.
