the super committee didn't do anything

Home > Archives (Nov 21, 2011) > There Will Be No Spending Cuts! Even with Sequestration, Spending Will Go Up 16%

There Will Be No Spending Cuts! Even with Sequestration, Spending Will Go Up 16%

November 21, 2011

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RUSH:  Oh, come on, man, it's not because the super committee didn't do anything.  It's not why the stock market's down about 300 points.  Everybody knew the super committee wasn't gonna do anything.  And, by the way, there are no spending cuts.  Even with sequestration, there are no spending cuts.  It's just reductions in the rate of growth.  It's the same old thing.  Spending is still gonna go up.  It's just like everything else with the US budget, it's said to be a cut because it's not going up as much.  But defense spending with sequestration will still go up 16%.  There's no spending cuts here, zilch, zero, nada.
But anyway, folks, the market's not down because the super committee is gonna admit failure.  Everybody knew this was gonna happen.  Nobody expected the super committee to come up with -- (interruption) are you still confused?  It will not be hollowed out.  There will be no spending cuts.  There are no spending cuts in sequestration or anything else.  You know how the current services baseline budget works.  The current services baseline budget projects an increase of let's say 23%, just to pick a number, okay? (interruption)  Well, it is, it's the same thing every year.  When's the last time the budget went down in anything?  It doesn't happen.  Ask yourself, of course everybody bought it.  It's simple, when you're beat over the head with it for two weeks about all these drastic, Draconian cuts.
So if something's supposed to go up, spending go up 23%, and it's only gonna go up 16%, they wail and moan about a 7% cut.  But defense spending is going up even with sequestration.  The reason the market's down is because Obama's back in the country.  It has nothing to do with the super committee because nobody thought the super committee thing was ever gonna amount to a hill of beans, and especially the last two weeks.  These people on the market are not stupid.  They know that Obama's campaign is based on a do-nothing Congress.  That's who Obama's running against.  I never heard of the guy -- "Do-Nothing Congress" -- but he must be pretty powerful because that's who Obama is running against.  So the Congress cannot be allowed to do anything, otherwise an investment of a billion dollars, that's what Obama's gonna spend on his campaign, would be out the window.
Anyway, how are you, folks?  Hope you had a great weekend.  We're back, El Rushbo in the air chair, the distinguished and prestigious Attila the Hun chair at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
- - Snerdley was totally snookered.  You see how easy it is?  You are in the know.  You understand the current services baseline budgeting, and even you are shocked to realize now that there is no real cut from a baseline of zero in defense spending.  And there will not be a cut in Medicaid or Medicare spending.  There will be a reduction in how much it was supposed to be increased.  And that reduction from how much it was supposed to be increased to what the actual spending will be is what's called the cut, but there is no below zero, below the bottom line cut in spending on anything.
Now, Newt Gingrich this past summer, there was a Fox News debate this past summer about the time the idea of the super committee was being discussed, and Newt summarized it, he explained it, and he dissected it.  And he did so spontaneously.  He called it a truly dumb idea.  I have the transcript here.  Bret Baier said, "Mr. Speaker, why are you shaking your head about the super committee?  I mean this is an important question."  Gingrich said, "Look, I think the super committee's about as dumb an idea as Washington has come up with in my lifetime," and there was applause.  Remember, now, this was last summer.  And Newt, by the way, is not alone here in understanding that this thing was a joke to begin with.  Look, you've got 535 members of Congress, this is your typical blue ribbon committee just like they assign a bunch of people to do base closures to take the heat off of themselves.
You got 535 men and women in the United States Congress, the House and the Senate, and they pick, what, 12?  They're gonna sit here and do some dirty work?  And we expect those 12 are gonna come up with an idea that the others are gonna vote for?  It was never meant to be.  Newt says this past summer in August, (paraphrasing) "I think that this super committee is about as dumb an idea as Washington has come up with in my lifetime.  I mean if you look for a second -- you know, I used to run the House of Representatives.  I have some general notion of these things, and the idea that 523 senators and congressmen are going to sit around for four months while 12 brilliant people, mostly picked for political reasons, are going to sit in some room and brilliantly come up with a trillion dollars or force us to choose between gutting the military and accepting a tax increase is irrational.  They're gonna walk in just before Thanksgiving --" Newt said this in August "-- they're gonna walk in just before Thanksgiving and say, 'All right, we can shoot you in the head or we can cut off your right leg.  Which do you prefer?'  That will be our choice."
What they ought to do is scrap the committee right now, recognize it's a dumb idea, go back to regular legislative business, assign every subcommittee the task of finding savings, do it out in the open, the regular legislative order, and get rid of this secret, phony business.  Everything being done in Washington where the budget is concerned for the past year or two has been in secret, be it Boehner and Obama talking about the debt ceiling or the super committee. Do you know when the last full meeting of the super committee was, meaning when every member of it attended a meeting?  November 1st to November 3rd.  I don't have the date right in front of me, but that was the last time they all got together, November 1st to November 3rd.
It's smoke and mirrors, folks.  You put 12 partisan Democrats on this committee who have as their number one objective reelecting Barack Obama and I will guarantee you that there is no way that this problem's gonna be solved.  That's not the Obama strategy is to solve the problem.  The Obama strategy is to exacerbate the problem and then get together with the media and blame the Republicans for it.  Now, how can they do that if they move toward a solution?  They can't.  It's just that simple.  Sometimes it's hard for people to understand it, recognize it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Rand Paul. This is from State of the Union on CNN yesterday morning. The host Candy Crowley said to Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), "So, you are willing to have cuts in the Pentagon budget that the Defense Secretary has said will be devastating?"
PAUL: The interesting thing is there will be no cuts in military spending. This may surprise some people, but there will be no cuts in military spending because we're only cutting proposed increases. If we do nothing, military spending goes up 23% over ten years. If we sequester the money, it will still go up 16%. So spending is still rising under any of these plans.
RUSH: It's the dirty little secret once again. This is instructive, too. When I mentioned this at the top of the hour, even Snerdley -- who is as big a student of this stuff as anybody -- nothing, nothing, nothing gets past Snerdley. He's been with me 23 years. But yet, if it got past Snerdley -- if Snerdley spent the weekend thinking that with sequestration after the failure of the super committee, defense was gonna get really whacked -- I can imagine people who are not nearly as informed as Snerdley, what they thought. Same thing. But, folks, budgets don't get whacked in Washington. We actually need for some budgets to get whacked. That's what doesn't happen! There really never are genuine spending cuts. There are only reductions in the rate of growth or spending amounts that are less than projected, which then equals a cut from what was expected to be spent. But cut from zero, a zero baseline? There is no such thing. The current services baseline prevents real cuts.
No Medicare cuts, no defense budget cuts, whatever happens with the super committee.
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RUSH: You know, John McCain was quoted the Wall Street Journal (it might have been an op-ed, I forget which) commenting about those of us back this past summer who thought the super committee idea was a lamebrain idea. Remember McCain called all of us "hobbits"? If you recall, he (impression), "Ah, you people are just hobbits. You're hobbits! You gotta do it through the super committee! It will work, you'll see! You'll see." See?

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