Cutting the budget

Well, President Obama said all the right words about cutting the debt and deficit last night in his State of the Union speech, but as usual didn’t make any specific proposals about what to cut. Senator Paul Rand and Representative Michele Backman, both Republicans and both Tea Party favorites, have released lists of what they propose to cut, and of course there are the predictable howls of outrage, especially from the liberals.

I think their proposals are quite reasonable. Yes, it will be unpopular to cut the National Endowment for the Humanities, eliminate the Department of Education and farm subsidies, as well as support for public broadcasting and Amtrak subsidies. On the other hand, if the government has to borrow 40% of its budget every year, then we simply can’t afford some of these things, nice as they might be.

In fact, “extreme” as they may appear, neither of these proposals cuts anywhere near enough from the budget to stem the debt tide. The numbers make it clear that we need to cut 30-40% just to stop adding to the debt, and a lot more to begin to reduce the Federal debt. And in fact there is no way to cut that much from the Federal budget without cutting some from the two major entitlement programs – social security and Medicare.

Time to get real about this problem. The president was right – for our future competitiveness we need to invest more in education and innovation. The only practical, sustainable way to do that is to cut, and cut drastically, almost everywhere else. I don't find the Republican proposals too extreme - I find them too timid for the size of the problem we face.