Shocker: Obama’s “Balanced” Deficit Reduction Plan Is 73% Tax Hikes
“[A]ccording to Obama’s math, his ‘balanced’ plan cuts the projected cumulative debt by $4.4 trillion over ten years with 36% of the reduction coming from a $1.6 trillion tax increases — 80% from wealthier Americans, 20% from business,” reports Jim Pethokoukis. “So, basically, $2 in spending cuts for each $1 in tax hikes.”
The problem? Well, President Obama doesn’t do honest math. As you can see in the ledger of Obama’s deficit reductions, he’s count over $1 trillion in cost savings from ending our “overseas contingency operations” (or “wars” as they’re traditionally called) in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Obama has already claimed to have ended the war in Iraq, and to be in the process of winding down the war in Afghanistan. Those are policies already in place. Counting savings from ending those wars into the next decade is an accounting fiction, as is counting the cuts in discretionary spending that were already part of the Budget Control Act passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama.
If we remove those spending cuts, we’re left (as Pethokoukis points out) with just $577 billion in spending cuts and $1.6 trillion in tax hikes, and just $2.177 trillion in deficit reduction over a decade.
Not only is that a paltry sum of deficit reduction, but since when did giving the government more money result in the politicians slowing down spending?
Tags: Barack Obama, deficits, national debt
