Gov Tim Pawlenty, lets pass a law to change reality

[Mr Bean]

First some background
Gov Pawlenty has been outspoken recently which most people take as a sign he's going to run for President in 2012

He's done interviews with several news groups like this one
National Review

NRO: Should congressional Republicans raise the debt ceiling?

Pawlenty: I'm not for more debt, and if there's any way to avoid that, they should not raise the ceiling. We have to get spending under control, but we also have to make sure they don't wound the economy in the process. You've got a bunch of people holding our debt and the signal that it sends if you can't actually back it up. ... I think it's fine to say that we're not going to raise the debt ceiling, but you had better make sure you can live on that amount of money. If they can, they should. I think they should exhaust the possibility of cuts before raising the debt ceiling again.

Today he said the following when interviewed per Huffington Post

"They should not raise the debt ceiling," Pawlenty said. "I believe they should pass legislation that would allow them to sequence the spending as revenues come in to make sure they don't default. And then have a debate about what other spending could be reduced."

"That's right," he added, when asked again if Republicans should vote against raising the debt ceiling. "And to avoid the default I would take it one step further: send the president a piece of legislation that authorizes the federal government to sequence the paying of its bills so that we don't default on the debt obligations, and then we have a debate about how we reduce the other

Still hunting a second source but the point is clear that Tim falls into the Bush era "deficients don't matter" camp. The camp that brought us massive deficients despite being Republican fiscal conservative card carrying groupies.

So lets review, don't raise the debt ceiling, but cut spending to match revenue. Any halfway competent journalist would ask the follow up question "So Governor what are you going to cut to prevent us from going over revenue, and you must be specific don't give me I'll cut spending bullshit, name the programs your going to cut to to make up the 1.3 trillion dollar deficit, you must cut 1.3 trillion dollars from the budget THIS YEAR or your going to run over the debt ceiling"

But of course we have no competent journalists, we only have news actors and sucks ups so that question was not asked. But the numbers kind of bring the problem into prospective does it not? We are spending 1.3 trillion a year of which the two wars make up some 71% of that deficit because they were unpaid for. Even if you do end both wars day 1 of 2012 that still means you need to cut 460 billion from the budget this year. Which means your either cutting defense or you have to eliminate the Department of Housing, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Agriculture, The Department of Education, the Department of Veteran's Affairs, NASA, Department of Justice and raise taxes for the last 80 billion and you can balance the budget! Or totally eliminate Medicare/Medicade which would also balance the budget. Social security is payed for by it's own taxes so cutting it won't help anything but will free up cash so it's another possibility.

[Thanas]

I can't believe a politician in Europe would be able to say that instead of being specific. US news media sucks beyond belief.

[Mr Bean]

I can't believe a politician in Europe would be able to say that instead of being specific. US news media sucks beyond belief.

To quote NBC

When NBC asked him to name a federal program he's willing to cut, Boehner replied, "I don't think I have one off the top of my head, but there is no part of this government that should be sacred."

He does not have one off the top of his head. Keep in mind he is our new Speaker of the House, 2nd in Line for the Presidency and spent the past six months saying he's coming to Washington to cut the budget and slash the deficit. He's in a sit down interview with Brian Williams which he had the questions ahead of time.

Yeah, American Journalism does suck.

[Thanas]

I think it fits well within the latest GOP play to claim that they are not really in charge and therefore not to be blamed for doing nothing. Link. After all, they do not want to cut much spending, and they do not want to raise taxes. Yet they want a balanced budget.

Solution: Blame the other guy.

[Talhe]

His first act as President would probably be cutting education and civil services, like he's done here in his home state. And speaking of elections, there's no guarantee he'd even win Minnesota; the third party tends to attract a lot of votes away from his opponent.

[The Spartan]

Most aggravating, to me, about all of this is that they conveniently ignore (as do their supporters) what they did when they controlled all three branches of the federal government: more than doubling the $6 trillion national debt.

This concern about debt and spending is just window dressing for their bullshit.

[Lord MJ]

When it is mentioned that the GOP ran up the deficit when they were in power, they always respond by trotting out that Obama added more to the deficit with his policies in the first few months of him being in Office, than Bush did in his entire term as President.

Any mention of the fact that the GOP was responsible for the deficits we face simply bounce off of conservatives due to that fact.

[Simon_Jester]

How are they citing the numbers there? Integrating Obama policy costs over ten years while not doing the same for Bush policies? Not counting tax cuts as an increase to the deficit?

That sounds like something that would require a fair bit of creative arithmetic, to me.

[Lord MJ]

This is two years old, but here is some of their reasoning.

http://blog.heritage.org/2009/03/24/bus ... -pictures/

Obama has repeatedly claimed that his budget would cut the deficit by half by the end of his term. But as Heritage analyst Brian Riedl has pointed out, given that Obama has already helped quadruple the deficit with his stimulus package, pledging to halve it by 2013 is hardly ambitious. The Washington Post has a great graphic which helps put President Obama’s budget deficits in context of President Bush’s.

What’s driving Obama’s unprecedented massive deficits? Spending. Riedl details:

* President Bush expanded the federal budget by a historic $700 billion through 2008. President Obama would add another $1 trillion.
* President Bush began a string of expensive finan­cial bailouts. President Obama is accelerating that course.
* President Bush created a Medicare drug entitle­ment that will cost an estimated $800 billion in its first decade. President Obama has proposed a $634 billion down payment on a new govern­ment health care fund.
* President Bush increased federal education spending 58 percent faster than inflation. Presi­dent Obama would double it.
* President Bush became the first President to spend 3 percent of GDP on federal antipoverty programs. President Obama has already in­creased this spending by 20 percent.
* President Bush tilted the income tax burden more toward upper-income taxpayers. President Obama would continue that trend.

* President Bush presided over a $2.5 trillion increase in the public debt through 2008. Setting aside 2009 (for which Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for an additional $2.6 trillion in public debt), President Obama’s budget would add $4.9 trillion in public debt from the beginning of 2010 through 2016.

UPDATE: Many Obama defenders in the comments are claiming that the numbers above do not include spending on Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush years. They most certainly do. While Bush did fund the wars through emergency supplementals (not the regular budget process), that spending did not simply vanish. It is included in the numbers above. Also, some Obama defenders are claiming the graphic above represents biased Heritage Foundation numbers. While we stand behind the numbers we put out 100%, the numbers, and the graphic itself, above are from the Washington Post. We originally left out the link to WaPo. It has now been added.

CLARIFICATION: Of course, this Washington Post graphic does not perfectly delineate budget surpluses and deficits by administration. President Bush took office in January 2001, and therefore played a lead role in crafting the FY 2002-2008 budgets. Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for the FY 2009 budget deficit that overlaps their administrations, before President Obama assumes full budgetary responsibility beginning in FY 2010. Overall, President Obama’s budget would add twice as much debt as President Bush over the same number of years.

[Alphawolf55]

We are spending 1.3 trillion a year of which the two wars make up some 71% of that deficit because they were unpaid for. Even if you do end both wars day 1 of 2012 that still means you need to cut 460 billion from the budget this year. Which means your either cutting defense or you have to eliminate the Department of Housing, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Agriculture, The Department of Education, the Department of Veteran's Affairs, NASA, Department of Justice and raise taxes for the last 80 billion and you can balance the budget! Or totally eliminate Medicare/Medicade which would also balance the budget. Social security is payed for by it's own taxes so cutting it won't help anything but will free up cash so it's another possibility..

Not that I disagree with the overall point that politicians need to be realistic about cutting spending and start getting specific. How are you getting that we spend 930 billion on the two wars? Or are you counting any and all military spending as cost of the war?

[Mr Bean]

Not that I disagree with the overall point that politicians need to be realistic about cutting spending and start getting specific. How are you getting that we spend 930 billion on the two wars? Or are you counting any and all military spending as cost of the war?

Compare and contrast 2000 military spending VS 2010 military spending, account for inflation then minus 2000 from 2010 numbers you add in a few hundred billion. In 2000 we had 321 billion in DoD spending VS 2010 402 billion then add the wars in on top. Which is another 283 billion plus another X number of dollars from the emergency appropriations which are not all factored into the budget but are anywhere from another 29 billion a year to another 80 billion a year on top. Sometimes we pass multiples per year.

[Alphawolf55]

But that still doesn't mean the wars cost 900 billion a year or even close to it..