Base Line Budgeting, The Dirty Little Secret

I couldn't vote for Ron Paul. I agree with him on a lot of stuff, but he's wrong on national security, he's wrong on Israel, and he fails to understand who the enemies of this country are. There has been a lot of screeching and hand wringing over past couple of days concerning the failure of the super committee. I have heard the politicians moan that defense is going to be cut and our national security is in jeopardy.

Ron Paul got it right last night during the CNN debate. He mentioned the term "baseline budgeting" and advised us that there will be no actual cuts in the defense budget. In fact there will be no actual cuts in ANYTHING. The only thing that will happen is a REDUCTION IN THE RATE OF GROWTH. There will be no cuts in defense, no cuts in medicare, no cuts in social security, NO CUTS! NO CUTS! NO CUTS!

With baseline budgeting the amount of money for the federal gubment goes up every year. It never goes down. When we have a "cut", nothing goes down. The rate of gubment growth simple doesn't go up quite as much as it would have otherwise. Back in August when the debt ceiling was raised, alleged cuts were made. What this amounted to was reducing the growth of the deficit over the next 10 years from about 10 trillion dollars to between 7 and 8 trillion dollars. Doesn't sound like any cuts to me, does it to you? To paraphrase Senator Jim DeMint, it's like driving over a cliff at 60 mph rather than at 80 mph.

Why do we seldom hear of baseline budgeting? Well, it's the dirty little secret of Warshington. Nobody in Warshington save for perhaps a few Tea Party legislators want to really cut spending. If the idea of baseline budgeting were actually revealed and understood by the average American voter, there would be absolute outrage against the Warshington establishment over the sham of spending cuts. If we really want spending cuts, lets take the budget back to 2006 levels and live within our means. Seems like we were doing OK in 2006.

So next time you hear one of your liberal friends or establishment Republican friends moaning about their entitlements being cut or the defense budget being cut, ask them how much less the defense or the entitlement budget is going to be from 2012 to 2013 and then ask them to explain to you the concept of baseline budgeting. Watch the glazed look come over their faces.

Shhhhhhhhh! QUIET! Baseline budgeting! It's the dirty little secret!