While House Republicans finally elected Rep. Kevin McCarthy to the speakership, the path the party followed to get there included a series of deals and promises on a host of procedural and policy issues.
Among the most consequential: a promise to start cutting government spending.
As Vox's Andrew Prokop writes, the outlines of the deal include entitlements…and will unavoidably affect defense spending:
McCarthy commits that House Republicans will create a plan for a balanced federal budget within 10 years, including “long-term reforms” to mandatory spending programs (entitlements like Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid), as well as capping discretionary spending where it was during the first fiscal year of the Biden administration.
This will be a politically perilous and controversial effort — it has already led to headlines pointing out it would mean cutting $75 billion in defense spending from current levels.
That's the mildest of possible headlines, considering the unholy storm Democrats (and some Republicans) will raise over any effort to reform entitlement spending. The attack lines were tested in the 2022 midterms and they are guaranteed to reappear once a formal GOP budget proposal is produced.
Democratic demagoguery over entitlements is, then, predictable, lamentable…and willfully, dangerously ignorant. As the Center for a Responsible Federal Budget notes:
According to the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) latest baseline, budget deficits will rise dramatically over the next decade, from $1.0 trillion at the end of Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 to nearly $2.3 trillion by 2032. This increase is the result of a projected $3.0 trillion increase in spending over those ten years exceeding the projected $1.8 trillion increase in revenue. 92 percent of projected nominal spending growth under current law can be explained by three budget areas: Social Security, federal health care programs, and interest payments on the national debt. Even under an alternative scenario where policymakers extend most expiring tax cuts and allow annual appropriations to grow with the economy instead of inflation, those three areas would still account for 85 percent of projected nominal spending growth through 2032.
Leaving entitlements untouched, then, might be good politics. But it's bad – even reckless – economics.
We'll have to wait and see what comes of the promises McCarthy made on federal spending. Perhaps something genuinely reformist and effective will appear. But don't hold your breath. Politics and the reelection imperative have, generally, blunted far-reaching reforms. Stay tuned.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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Yes CUT debt, overhead A-Z
See CAGW.org
What we need is much more significant, even draconian, cuts to the federal behemoth. I believe the best way is to bind the federal government with VERY heavy chains of the Constitution by restoring Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution to its exegetical meaning. Perhaps a THIRTY to FORTY percent reduction in government spending, regulation, bureaucracy, and civilian personnel should be the goal.
It might even require the federal government to keep its promises to the western States to return land they were promised when admitted to Statehood, recalling US troops from many areas overseas if not critically needed and putting them on our southern border, ending all but emergency humanitarian benefits to illegals, and severely curbing the agencies now more dedicated to spying on citizens rather than or enemies.
Yes indeed, good thinking, but just remember: there are swamp lizards on BOTH sides, in BOTH parties, who will founder or even resist when cuts to entitlements are eminent. I fear a sinister Uniparty of swamp lizards, congresspeople on the gravy train, who will pander to their constituency by bribes from the public treasury, all to procure votes that favor their longevity.
From an older Republican… As of 2021, the US government owed $2.908 trillion to the Social Security Trust Fund, which it has used on other government spending. As of 2020, the total FICA taxes received on an annual basis were roughly equal to the benefits paid out. If the Republicans attempt to reduce Social Security benefits due to prior excessive government spending on other items that causes them to now be unable to replenish the Social Security Trust Fund, you will see myself and many other older Republicans vote for whoever will not touch the benefits. Find another way to strengthen the Social Security Trust Fund other than by harming those of us who were forced to pay into the trust fund for 45 years during our working lives instead of into retirement vehicles that we would have liked to choose. Allow more work visas for guest workers, taking FICA taxes from their paychecks, with the clear understanding that they will never receive Social Security, make states or districts whose political representatives borrowed the most from the fund to spend on local boondoggles cut their spending in order to repay the money to the trust fund, or find some other way. Be creative. Government took the money. Government should find a way to make up for it that does not injure benefit recipients.
“……will create a plan for a balanced federal budget within 10 years,…….”
10 years???
Oh, goody. That should give the Dem’s more than enough time to cheat their way back into the majority and get rid of the GOP’s advancements for we, the people.
The Biden government has irresponsibly spend our country into the poor house and in no way should that burden be placed on the backs of those who have spent their lives paying into Social Security to carry them through their retirement years. Social Security is a sacred trust and should never be a means for our irresponsible government to buy its way out of the debt it created.
Why is medicare and social security refered to as an “entitlement” when money was taken from every paycheck I had until I retired to fund these programs? On the other hand, medicaid is not paid for by the those receiving it.