Cutting The Deficit Doesn't Mean Adding $6 Trillion Instead Of $8 Trillion

Senator Rand Paul takes issue with President Obama’s assertion that he’s reduced the budget deficit by $2 trillion.

“He said in his speech that he’s reduced the deficit by two trillion,” Senator Paul said on Fox News Sunday today. “Well he added $6 trillion. That means that because he didn’t add $8 trillion that he’s reduced it by $2 trillion? That’s absurd.”

What’s more absurd is that so many in the media go along with it. The goal of the fourth estate should be to question what political leaders tell us. And yet, so often, we allow political leaders like President Obama to box in how we’re allowed to talk about problems such as the national deficit and debt to the point where we talk of $6 trillion in projected deficits, instead of $8 trillion in projected deficits, as a deficit cut.

We’re not cutting anything. We might be slowing the rate of debt accumulation, and there’s something to be said about that, but we’re still accumulating debt at an alarming rate.