Speaker John Gets A Reason To Cry

Speaker John Boehner is a Republican. He thinks the government should simply do less, and the hell with the results. The thing is, Boehner lives in reality, while many in his caucus do not. You see, Speaker Boehner and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) are saying that they can't actually cut $100 billion from this year's budget when the budget year is half over. That's not good enough to the new Tea Party members. In fact, the Republican Study Committee wants $125 billion this year. Basically, the Leadership will have some angry members if they come back with $40 billion or $60 billion in cuts. To hell with the impact of these cuts to the current year, they want the huge cuts.

Let's be clear here. They are asking for $125 billion in cuts, excluding any cuts to Defense, Entitlements, and Health Care costs, major drivers of the federal deficit. In fact, the "discretionary" cuts they are asking for come from a pool of money that is less than $700 billion. So they are asking for a nearly 20% cut from all the programs that go towards the public.  You see, the federal budget is $3.8 trillion. Of that, 56% of the money is in non-discretionary areas. Another $251 billion is interest on the old debt. That's about $2.4 trillion of the budget there. The rest of that is "discretionary," and half of that is military spending. So basically, they want to cut all the "other departments": Education, Transportation, Energy, EPA, and Labor, to name a few. Sounds pretty rough, right?

I don't feel bad for Speaker Boehner, not one bit. He and Eric Cantor wanted to be in charge. So they built up this caucus full of radicals. Does their proposal make any sense? No. We're running a trillion dollar plus deficit, but these guys first inclination is to cut a part of the budget that even if completely eliminated wouldn't balance a budget. Well, it's insane. No feeling bad for John Boehner though. He wanted to be important. Well, he is.