Letter: Spending cuts a political sham

The Republicans are being criticized because the fiscal cliff legislation didn’t include spending cuts. As a lawyer for many years, I learned that to negotiate, you had to have a stick to shake at the other side. Without a stick you have nothing to fight with.

The Republicans didn’t have a stick. All of the Bush tax cuts were going to expire on Dec. 31. All they could do was maintain as much of those cuts as possible. President Barack Obama ran on maintaining the cuts for couples earning $250,000 or less. To their credit, the Republicans got that up to $450,000 for couples and that will be permanent.

Should the Republicans have said we won’t take any tax relief unless there are spending cuts? Not much of a fighting stick there. Obama would have said, “Fine. More tax money for me to spend. No cuts and you Republicans can explain why you threw the taxpayers under the bus.”

For those concerned about the lack of spending cuts, I say that notwithstanding all the posturing about cuts, Congress simply isn’t interested in that. The Budget Control Act of 2011 raised the debt limit by $900 billion and cut a measly $21 billion. The supercommittee created to cut $1.2 trillion couldn’t. The debt ceiling was raised and the $1.2 trillion of cuts was deferred until Jan. 1, 2013, so that wouldn’t be a distraction during the election.

The bottom line is that while the debt ceiling was raised twice since August, 2011, there have been no cuts except for the $21 billion. And the cuts scheduled to go in effect on Jan. 1 were — guess what — deferred for two months.

When the Budget Control Act was passed, I wrote to The Advocate and said it was a joke; that the cuts wouldn’t take place. Any cut passed by Congress can be restored by Congress.

Treasury Secretary Tim “Chicken Little” Geithner warned we would run out of money on New Year’s Eve. Expect more posturing about more spending cuts if the ceiling is to be raised. But don’t count on real cuts. Listen for the sound of a can being kicked farther down the road.

Move over Greece, we’re moving in!

William Bonin

lawyer

New Iberia

Comments

1) Comment by LSUinVail - 08/01/2013

The republicans remind me of Charlie Brown trying to kick the ball with Lucy teeing it up for him...they NEVER learn. In 1982 Reagan struck a deal for 3 dollars in spending cuts for every 1 dollar in tax increases, the cuts never did materialize because democrats pulled the ball away and reneged on the deal. HW Bush got duped as well by the democrats on a 2 dollar in spending cuts to 1 dollar in tax increase deal...remember "read my lips"? Again democrats reneged on the spending cuts part of the deal. Now that we have all of these new taxes, with more and higher taxes to come, do you think democrats will agree to ANY spending cuts this time? Not a chance, democrats are polished at this technique and republicans have fallen for it again. Sad for both parties, potentially devestating to us taxpayers.

2) Comment by teacherguy - 07/01/2013

I've decided to vote Constitution Party for the time being. Democrats and Republicans need to be shown the door. Constitution Party suggests doing away with federal departments such as education...even if it is short-lived, the ability to get set financially upright as a nation (short term sacrifice, long term benefit) would be worth it. 4 years without a dept of education (if applying the money saved directly to debt) would set the country on a fast course to being financially "upright". After 4 years of "sacrifice", if it is determined that that dept WAS needed...we can restart it with little or no debt as a nation. But nobody wants to swallow the bitter tasting medicine, go under anesthesia, etc., to fix our ailing economy...heck, I know a bunch of teachers that are ordering their lives right now to get out of the education field in LA! In other words, educators would be willing to "take the medicine" for the good of the country ...since we are used to taking medicine at everybody's whim whether we want to or not.

3) Comment by tradewinns - 07/01/2013

mygulf...; true you can receive advance payments for eic monthly, but, what happens when you overestimate your payment? then you owe the government the excess. also the vast majority of eic participants do not take monthly payments, they take it as a whole after the year (i worked eic accounts for the IRS). the IRS acknowledges (or did) that as much as 25% of all eic payments were fraudulent. after my association with it, it appears to me more than 50% is fraud. i do not want to be missunderstood, those receiving eic are not making alot of money, if what they report is true. so once you give them the money, you are not going to get it back! all the IRS does is (supposedly) restrict them from participating for a couple of years. however i disagree with the entire program and the total lack of enforcement from the IRS. they DO NOT follow up on fraud because they know they will not get the money back and consider it a waste of money to try (ironic huh?).

4) Comment by Mygulfbleedsforu - 07/01/2013

Just FYI, the anticipated earned income tax credit can be received in each paycheck throughout the year. Don't know exactly how it works.

5) Comment by DMJ - 07/01/2013

"The Republicans are being criticized because the fiscal cliff legislation didn’t include spending cuts." Uh....what? Last I checked, the Democrats were the ones criticized for this aspect of the negotiations. And yes, they did punt on spending cuts (surprise, surprise). We'll revisit this same thing for the months to come. If the GOP truly wants to reform entitlements, they'll have to sell the American public on this, which means they'll actually need to be honest about their objectives, which is something they're not very good at. Personally, I'd like to see Romney's plan of means-testing Medicare implemented and the removal of the SS tax cap. One big idea from each camp...and these would make both systems solvent until we're all dead.

6) Comment by tradewinns - 07/01/2013

i love the way the tax increase on $450K is called "permanent". the only thing that is permanent is change. what congress gives today thay can take back tomorrow. i believe the only solution to our budget problem is spending cuts in the short run and a balanced budget amendment for the long term. any program can be cut. the receipients of the cut programs (including entitlement programs of which i am one, my ONLY source of income) may not like it, but programs can be cut. however i would suggest there are so many programs (not just fraud but total programs) that are unnecessary that the budget could be reduced by leaps and bounds and still not reduce life's necessities. i.e. EIC, free cell phones. earned income credit is a bonus for working. the program cannot be necessary to sustain life as it is not given weekly, bi-weekly or even monthly, but yearly. if you have survived an entire year w/o it, it isn't maintaining life it is a bonus. bonuses are given not for working but by the employer for doing a better than required performance. free cell phones are the epitome of waste. and by the way this program now cost the taxpayers $1 BILLION a year. the government use to hand out food during what is called the depression, we should return to that practice.

7) Comment by Mygulfbleedsforu - 07/01/2013

There is only so much cutting of government spending that can be done without changing the laws, and we all know how much work, negotiation and time that takes. Many people don't understand the term "entitlement spending." Entitlement spending is that spending that can't be messed with, that can't be reduced or unfunded in a particular fiscal year in order to tighten the belt. Entitlements are amounts that citizens are entitled to by law as long as they meet the qualifications. The big three are social security, Medicare and Medicaid. What we would call welfare (such as food stamps and TANF payments) comes behind those three. None of this spending needs to be approved or appropriated by Congress first. On the other hand, discretionary spending, the kind Congress appropriates and can tighten the belt on, is defense, administration and enforcement of the various laws, transportation, the space program, some veterans' programs... that's the spending that can be cut through the appropriations process. As long as we are talking about directing anger here and there, let's make sure we know what it is that we are angry about. Nothing is really that easy.

8) Comment by postscript56 - 07/01/2013

Bonin should direct his anger at House Republicans. Had any of them been sincere about spending cuts they could have gotten a 4-1 deal in August 2011 during the last debt ceiling fight. But they turned that down, gambling instead on winning the election and repealing everything Obama had done. Only they lost. Then, having lost the election, they refused to negotiate a "grand bargain" choosing instead to walk away and vote on Plan B - which they couldn't pass. So if you are unhappy with the deal we ended up with place your blame on House Republicans. The whole nation refused the concept of addressing the debt through cuts alone. When House Republicans can be made to understand that, maybe we'll get somewhere.

9) Comment by Bighug - 07/01/2013

I'm all for cutting government spending. If you think the GOP is really in favor of cutting costs, ask them to save by getting us out of the war business.

10) Comment by [e-mail] - 07/01/2013

The real culprit is baseline budgeting of the federal bureacracy budgets, i.e departmental budgets are never "cut"; they are mandated by law to increase exponentially according to the money spent in the last fiscal year. When the polliticians say that the budgets will not be increased it's a subtle falsehood; they know full well that it will be increased through baseline budgeting without additional authorization from Congress. They don't complain because it means that their own staff budgets increase every year automatically.

11) Comment by slye753 - 06/01/2013

pull your head out of the sand and realize this is obamas war now.