Saturday, February 19, 2011

A Matter of Perspective, I Guess

. Saturday, February 19, 2011

The Washington Post headline:


"House Approves Dramatic Cuts in Federal Spending"
Total of Dramatic Cuts: $60 billion

Projected Budget Deficit: $1.645 trillion
Dramatic Cuts as percent of GDP: 0.004
Dramatic Cuts as percent of Total Budget: 0.0162
Dramatic Cuts as percent of Budget Deficit: 0.0375

Even this tiny cut is unlikely to stick.
House Republicans pushed the legislation through after a marathon debate capped off by an all-night session Friday that spilled into Saturday morning. During the bleary-eyed final roll call at 4:35 a.m., 235 Republicans were joined by no Democrats in support of dramatic spending reductions that they said were needed to address a soaring annual deficit of $1.6 trillion; 189 Democrats -- as well as three Republicans -- opposed it, accusing Republicans of writing the bill with a "double meat ax."
Only one trillion five hundred and forty billion left to go.

1 comments:

Emmanuel said...

I agree with the overall argument but to be exact, the $1.645T OMB deficit projection is for FY 2011. They're trying to pass the budget for FY 2012. It's still arguing over a trivial amount given the deficit will likely exceed a trillion yet again next fiscal year.

I'm having difficulties with the notion of WaPo as an American newspaper of record. This article aside, I haven't the slightest idea why its scribes mentioned Singapore in the previous post. Since when did the city-state become a crisis-hit country?

A Matter of Perspective, I Guess
 

PageRank

SiteMeter

Technorati

Add to Technorati Favorites