From Tuesday’s New York Times, an editorial tries to put the FY11 budget deal that averted a government shutdown Friday night in perspective, reminding readers that while a compromise certainly had to be reached, the contents of the deal will have real implications on our nation. It notes that most of the cuts agreed-to are pet causes of Republicans and won’t contribute positively to our economic recovery.
The bill contains enormous reductions in spending over the next six months — $38.5 billion over current spending, and another $40 billion below the amounts Mr. Obama had requested for the year. The withdrawal of that much money will cause significant damage to the economic recovery — neutralizing, in essence, much of the stimulative effect of last year’s payroll tax cut.
But beyond that, the bill damages many of the government’s most important programs and will hurt those on the economy’s lowest rungs. Many of those cuts, in particular, satisfy ancient Republican ideological urges but have little or no effect on the long-term budget deficit.
We do not advocate voting against the bill, unlike those on the right who are furious that the bill leaves standing federal agencies that they wanted to demolish. Doing so would cause another shutdown tailspin.
It would also fail to recognize that Democrats kept the bill from being unimaginably worse by taking out some of the Tea Party’s ideological demands and minimizing the number of discretionary cuts. Democrats actually increased investment slightly in several areas.
Senator Coons, while very supportive of the effort to cut wasteful discretionary spending and to be more selective about how the government spends its tax dollars, thinks that serious deficit reduction needs to take a wider view of the federal budget. Trying to reduce the deficit only by cutting from discretionary programs simply won’t do the job.
Rather, Chris generally supports the recommendations of the Bowles-Simpson Commission and has called for a comprehensive approach that also looks at Pentagon spending, reforms to entitlement programs, and an overhaul of the tax code.