Let's look at spending reality

One of the big themes in the current coverage of the debt ceiling issue is that the USA cannot cut spending without doing terrible harm to the poor and middle class. No one ever investigates this to put forward the truth, so I think it is time to set it out there.

During the four years of George W. Bush's second term, the average level of federal spending was 2.7 trillion dollars per year. This included major defense expenditures in Iraq which drove spending levels higher. During the Obama years, federal spending has averaged 3.7 trillion dollars. During Obama's term, costs in Iraq plummeted, but costs in Afghanistan rose, just about offsetting the dollars in the defense budget. In other words, the rise in spending was not due to defense. To be fair, some of the increased spending was due to the recession, but that was not that big a percentage of the rise. In other words, in just three years in office, Obama has managed to spend an additional three trillion dollars over the levels that spending was at during the second Bush term. In percentage terms, spending has risen by about 37% on average during the Obama term.

Let's put what this means into clear English: If the Congress cuts four hundred billion dollars of spending per year over the next ten years, the USA will save the four trillion dollars about which everyone speaks. Spending, however, will still be at a level that is $600 billion higher than it was under Bush. There will be no calamity. There will be nothing close to a calamity. Everyone needs to think about what it is that the federal government is doing now that it was not doing under Bush. What services or benefits is the public now receiving from the government that were not there under Bush? Where is that extra 600 billion dollars going? In short, would anyone even miss the reduction of the 400 billion dollars that would be cut from the budget?

The answer is self-evident. Most of the hue and cry over the cuts to the budget is just partisan nonsense coming from the Obamacrats. It is time for Washington to get serious and just cut the budget already.