Spending less: Household budget vs. Political Gubment budget

[HendrixFan]

You're ignorant or a liar. It isn't even close to that number.

Someone posted in another thread a link to show that the savings would "only" be $100B, and not the $250B or so other people were claiming. It was used to defend keeping that tax cuts in place because it wouldn't make much of a dent in the deficit.

Page 9 of the full CBO report shows that only $103 billion of the $390 billion is attributable to renewing the Bush tax cuts: $98 billion for “tax rates, credits, and deductions initially enacted in 2001, 2003, and 2009,” and $5 billion for estate and gift taxes.

 

[Rainsford]

I don't know what households you're talking about. But to be honest, many Americans seem pretty much on-par with the federal government in terms of budgeting. How many idiots bought way more house than they could afford, have ridiculous credit card balances and buy new cars all the time with money they don't have?

 

[Siddhartha]

Household

2011 Food cost per month - $300

After careful budgeting and tightening of the belt
2012 food cost per month - $250

Cut monthly food Spending by 16% in 2012.


Political Gubment

2011 xyz cost - $100B

2012 estimated xyz cost - $150B

After Spending cuts:

2012 actual xyz cost - $125B

In political budgeting speak they just cut spending by 50%

In household budgeting terms, increased spending by 25%



Is this a correct interpretation of the clowns in washington?

If so how can anyone support any group calling real spend increases - "spending cuts"?

Microeconomic rules do not work well at the macroeconomic level. What would happen to the economy, particularly during a severe down turn, if the federal government cut spending by 20%?

 

[Jhhnn]

The usual right wing idiocy is strong here.

Let's look at it a little differently. Let's say that a family has a nice fat income, say $100K back in 1980. They have their problems, but money really isn't one of them. That's analogous to the federal govt back then. The guy's boss, business, come to him and says that if he can cut the guy's salary that the business will grow by leaps & bounds & that they'll both make more money down the road. Meanwhile, the boss agrees to lend the guy the money to cover the difference. The guy goes for it, and everything seems to be working out, the arrangement continues for 30 years, at which point the guy is having trouble making the interest payments to his boss, unsurprisingly. By now, the boss is richer than ever, and he wants his money...

Which pretty much describes Reaganomics in a nutshell...

It's not time for the guy to knuckle under, take another pay cut, particularly since he's not just another guy, but the US govt. What he needs, and should demand, is a big pay raise...