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This week marks the deadline for the
so-called congressional Super Committee to meet its goal of cutting a
laughably small amount of federal spending over the next decade. In fact the
Committee merely needs to cut about $120 billion annually from the federal
budget over the next 10 years to meet its modest goals, but even this paltry
amount has produced hand-wringing and hysteria on Capitol Hill. This is only
cutting proposed increases. It has nothing to do with actually cutting
anything. This shows how unserious politicians are about our very serious
debt problems.
To be fair, however, in one sense
members of the Super Committee face an impossible task. They must, in effect,
cut government spending without first addressing the role of government in
our society. They must continue to insist the federal government can provide
Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits in the future as promised,
while maintaining our wildly interventionist foreign policy. Yet everyone
knows this is a lie.
Keep in mind that the 2011 federal
deficit alone was about $1.3 trillion, which means the Super Committee needs
to cut that much PER YEAR rather than over a 10 year period. If Congress ever
hopes to address its debt problem, it must first stop accumulating any new
debt immediately, in 2012.
Federal revenue likely will be about
$2.3 trillion in fiscal 2012.
The 2004 federal budget was about $2.3 trillion. So Congress simply needs to
adopt the 2004 budget next year and the federal government will balance
outlays and revenue. That’s all it would take to produce a balanced
budget right now. Was the federal government really too small just 7 years
ago, in 2004? Of course not. Only Washington hysteria would have us believe
otherwise.
Yet our Republican and Democrat friends
on the Super Committee want to take 10 years, or even 30 years, to produce a
balanced budget.
Government spending isn’t just
wasteful; it is often actively harmful to stated goals. The Super Committee
could simply apply 2004 spending levels across the board and a tremendous
victory for fiscal sanity would be accomplished.
What seems
more likely, however, is a rearrangement of the tax code in an attempt to
bring in more revenue. Deductions and credits will be taken away, and the
Bush tax cuts will be allowed to expire. As a result, less money will remain
in the private sector to create jobs and produce economic growth. The Super
Committee has an opportunity to take a small baby step in the right
direction. Instead, they no doubt will take this opportunity to raise taxes
and make everything worse. But increasing taxes will only diminish freedom
and deepen the recession. Instead of looking for ways to hike taxes under the
guise of “raising revenue,” the Super Committee should put forth
a plan of real spending cuts to put America back on the path to liberty and
prosperity.
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