Phony 'Cuts'

Andrew McCarthy launches devastating salvos against Speaker Boehner's debt plan in this National Review Online piece. Senator Rand Paul made the same objections last week. The most objectionable part of this plan is the chicanery regarding the so-called "cuts" which, as McCarthy points out below, are not real cuts at all, but merely a slowdown in the rate of increase. It borders on the insulting to make the claim that cuts are actually taking place. If you're lost, the first thing you want to do is stop going down the wrong road and then find the correct way forward. The one thing you do not do is pursue the same incorrect path, only at a slower pace! Sadly, that seems to be the rule of thumb behind the Boehner plan, simply easing up on the bad medicine, not a clean break from it. As a conservative, it is impossible to disagree with these objections and it is easy to understand why a vote against the Boehner plan is the correct course of action for the genuine conservative. When it comes to facing the reality of the makeup of the federal government however, i.e., that the Republicans control one-half of the Congress while the Democrats control the rest, pragmatism cannot always be scuttled for purity. It presents a difficult situation for Republicans, and underscores why the next election will be pivotal.

Here's an excerpt from McCarthy's piece:

House Speaker John Boehner has a plan that he touts as slashing about $900 billion in government spending — shy of his original claim, only two days earlier, that cuts would amount to $1.2 trillion. It’s nonsense, of course. In Washington, unlike the rest of the known universe, a “cut” is a reduction in the rate of increase. There are never real cuts. In reality, Speaker Boehner’s plan would add $9.1 trillion to the national debt. It is a “cut” only in the sense that the Obama Democrats have rigged matters so that, if nothing changes, autopilot would add $10 trillion.

You could call this a cruel joke on a country that is already well over $14 trillion in debt — a country in which every newly born child opens his eyes as a debtor, well over $30,000 in the hole. But that would be premature, because I haven’t gotten to the punchline yet. The reason Speaker Boehner and the Republican establishment have suddenly stirred themselves to “cut” spending is their determination to keep the Ponzi scheme going. The “cuts” — less than $100 billion of which are real (the rest are consigned to the illusory “out years,” meaning they’re the responsibility of some future Congress) — are to be made in exchange for giving the government the authority to borrow another $2.5 trillion.