rssThe Pledge to Increase the Deficit
Monday, September 27, 2010 at 5:33 pm
- 15 Comments
The Center for American Progress’ Michael Ettlinger and Michael Linden do quick work dismantling the GOP’s Pledge to America, a governing platform released with great fanfare but to little applause last week. Lo and behold, cutting taxes without cutting spending leads to yawning deficits and a fatter national debt.
The “Pledge to America” budget would mean $11.1 trillion in deficits over the next 10 years. By 2020, the federal budget deficit would be 6.3 percent of gross domestic product, the federal debt would exceed 93 percent of GDP, and interest payments on the debt would be more than $1 trillion a year. The budget deficit would be about $200 billion larger in 2020 under the “Pledge to America” plan than it would be under President Barack Obama’s budget, and over the next 10 years deficits would be $1.5 trillion higher than under the president’s budget.
The substantial increase in deficits under the “Pledge to America” budget are due to the significant tax cuts that come from extending all expiring tax provisions and the implementation of several new tax cuts. Altogether, tax revenues under the “Pledge to America” plan would average 16.7 percent of GDP. During the last period the federal government ran balanced budgets revenues averaged 20 percent of GDP.
The document claims that these cuts will be offset by spending reductions, but their proposals for these reductions add up to significantly less than their revenue cuts. The vast bulk of these spending cuts are achieved through what are described as “hard caps,” but they provide little detail as to what programs would be cut.
The “Pledge to America” also includes a repeal of the Affordable Care Act. But since the ACA reduces deficits over the next 10 years, repealing it increases the deficit as well.
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15 Comments
Comment posted September 28, 2010 @ 1:18 am
You need to understand something; the deliberate inflation of the national deficit is precisely the reason needed to simply start shutting it down. Why does Rand Paul or Sharon Angle (sp?) in Nevada want to get rid of the Department of Education? They can't argue to simply shut it down unless a dramatic federal deficit is shown to be out of control. This is precisely what the neocons tried to do with their tax cuts. And nothing has changed; remember voodoo economics? How can you start wiping out the debt without increased taxation? Any republican administration is going to increase defense spending. Even the Republicans are confused on economic issues, but that doesn't matter…it's throw the bums out….and replace them with even bigger bums. Kinda reflects America's obesity problem…dumb & dumber.
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