After the festive celebration late yesterday by leaders in the House, Senate, and White House over agreeing to a deficit plan, Congressmen today had the opportunity to look over the proposal in preparation for a vote on August 1st. One of these Congressmen, Representative Ron Paul, said unequivocally that the proposed cuts in the bill are illusory, and in fact, are not cuts at all, but rather drawdowns in future spending and growth.
One might think that the recent drama over the debt ceiling involves one side wanting to increase or maintain spending with the other side wanting to drastically cut spending, but that is far from the truth. In spite of the rhetoric being thrown around, the real debate is over how much government spending will increase.
No plan under serious consideration cuts spending in the way you and I think about it. Instead, the "cuts" being discussed are illusory, and are not cuts from current amounts being spent, but cuts in projected spending increases. This is akin to a family "saving" $100,000 in expenses by deciding not to buy a Lamborghini, and instead getting a fully loaded Mercedes, when really their budget dictates that they need to stick with their perfectly serviceable Honda. But this is the type of math Washington uses to mask the incriminating truth about their unrepentant plundering of the American people. - Zerohedge
Congressman Paul is correct in his assertion, and it appears that yesterdays deficit agreement was either a rushed attempt to get legislation passed before the August 2nd deadline, or that Congressional leadership simply choose to 'kick the can' down the road until a new Congress must take up the burden. The proposal agreed to on Sunday keeps actual spending cuts from taking place until after the 2012 election, which means that Congress could very easily ignore these cuts when constructing the budget for 2013.
Fortunately for the American people, it appears more and more that Speaker of the House John Boehner may not have enough votes to pass the deficit agreement in Congress, and some members of the Senate are threatening a filibuster to kill it at that level. If one or both of these barriers happen for the deficit agreement, then all the work done over the weekend by Congressional leadership would have been a waste.
Congressman Ron Paul is pointing out today that the deficit plan agreed upon over the weekend is simply an illusory bill that accomplishes nothing for the debt, or for the American people. It is being compared by some to the Tarp bill that was passed in 2008 which provided money to the banking system without any knowledge of where it is going, or what it is accomplishing, and in both instances, it does nothing for the US economy that stands on the brink of default.
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