Stop Attacking The Budget Deal

The moment the budget deal came out, large groups of conservatives started whining. Most were just poorly informed, but some are doing this intentionally because it gets them ratings or gets them noticed -- a recent crop has joined them because they don’t want to be on the wrong side of the crowds. So let me point out a few things:

1. Get Your Numbers Right: Let me state clearly a point that most of these pundit keep wanting to ignore -- this was not $38.5 billion in cuts, it was $78.5 billion in cuts. That means Boehner got 78.5% of the $100 billion sought, which is not bad given that he does not control the Senate or the White House.

2. 100% Is A Delusion: The idea that Boehner should have gotten everything is ridiculous. As someone who is accustomed to negotiating professionally, I can tell you that anyone who claims you can get everything you want in an adversarial negotiation has no idea what they are talking about. The amount you can get depends entirely on two factors: (1) how much the other side cares about a particular issue and (2) how desperate they are. The fact is, the Democrats weren’t desperate. Why? Because they are down and out and without momentum and without a way of regaining it. Their best chance is to introduce a wild card like a shutdown in the hopes of finding an issue that gives them respectability or hope the shutdown deprives the Republicans of momentum. Shutting down the government when the other side has nothing to lose is stupid because you can't win. Moreover, even if the Democrats did care, the closer you get to 100% the greater the resistance. By the time you get to 100%, the other side has nothing to lose by rejecting the deal and seeing how things play out.

3. Stop Ignoring The Riders: Look at the riders and you will see a tremendous amount of conservative influence won. Everything from forcing votes that will hang around Democratic necks to forcing Obama to keep Guantanamo Bay open to forcing the removal of the gray wolf from the endangered species list was included in this deal and represent clear conservative policy victories. So why do the pundits keep focusing only on the two big riders the Democrats never would have agreed to?

4. Stop The False Comparisons: This idea that more ($80 billion) was spent in two weeks than the cuts is a red herring. First, federal spending is not consistent week by week, thus you can easily find weeks where nothing gets spent. Does that mean the value of the budget deal depends on what week they sign it?

Secondly, this is false logic of the worst kind. A budget is a year-long endeavor and cuts are incremental. This criticism is like complaining that a dieter didn't stop eating until they’ve burned off all the calories they are trying to save throughout the year.

The complaint that the debt grew more than the cuts is similarly flawed. 88% of our budget is either defense spending or mandatory entitlement spending. Comparing the total spending cuts made to the remaining 12% against the debt caused by the 88% will naturally end up with the debt being greater because we haven’t touched entitlements yet. This is like complaining that someone who cuts their movie ticket budget in half hasn’t made any cuts because that amount is dwarfed by their spending on utilities.

5. Know What You’re Talking About: This idea that gimmicks were used seems to have sent people into hysterics, even though they had no idea what the gimmicks were. All budgets use “gimmicks.” That’s how you estimate anything that isn’t a precisely known amount, e.g. future tax revenues. Complaining about "gimmicks" without knowing what they are is irrational.

6. Stop Treating Spin As Fact: This idea that the cuts will only result in $300 million in savings is pure spin. It is a flat out distortion.

First, let me point out the irony that conservatives, who regularly attack CBO for blinding applying the assumptions it is given without ever asking if those assumptions are realistic, are suddenly accepting as true the spin placed on a CBO report.

Secondly, make no mistake, this is spin. If you look at the CBO report, it quite correctly notes that the 2011 budget will be reduced by $80 billion. The end. So how do we get to the $300 million figure? By making a false comparison. The $300 million number comes from comparing the actual spending after the budget deal against the amount spent in 2010. But that’s a false measure. When budgets are issued, they include automatic increases for each year. The 2010 budget was no different. Thus, had no budget deal taken place, the 2011 spending would have been $78.5 billion higher. To pretend that this somehow wouldn’t have happened and that therefore a comparison to the spending of 2010 is appropriate is factually wrong and entirely deceptive.

Further, this is where the supposed gimmick comes in. CBO is assuming that many of the spending cuts involve spending that isn’t likely to have happened based on the rate of spending so far during the year. In other words, based on what’s been spent so far, CBO thinks the agencies wouldn’t have needed this money anyway. Thus, the inclusion of these amounts as cuts in the budget deal is considered "a gimmick." But CBO knows this is false because agencies always spend their budgets. This is part of an ancient end-of-year ritual where agencies rush to spend everything they’ve been given so that their future budgets aren’t reduced. Also, large projects often get pushed off to the end of the year so the agency knows before it begins that there will be money available to complete the project in the following year. Thus, comparisons to the current rate of spending are a fraud.

7. Stop Aiding And Abetting The Democrats: Finally, this whole thing is really ticking me off. If people have a legitimate criticism then make it constructively. Don’t go throwing a temper tantrum and ignorantly attacking the Republicans. All these pundits are doing is helping the Democrats by making the Republicans seem fractured, disorganized and unsupported.

And let me point out a few facts about the pundits doing the attacking. First, most of these people rely on being loud and bombastic to get audiences. Outrage sells, whether it’s justified or not.

Secondly, the track record of these pundits is suspect at best. These are the same people who ran with every single anti-Republican rumor they heard over the last couple years. Many of these pundits are the same people who kept insisting the Republicans didn’t have the nerve to fight Obama/Pelosi even as they blocked most of the Democratic agenda in party-line votes and filibusters despite having NO power to block anything. These same pundits who now ignore the riders and the additional $40 billion in cuts and who have bought hook, line and sinker into the spin on the CBO report, are the same people who jumped on the Scott Brown for President bandwagon without having any clue what he stood for. They are the same people who jumped on the Christie bandwagon because of a youtube video, again without bothering to look into his RINO ways. These are the same people who jumped on Tea Party freshmen for a party that none of them attended, and a dozen other stupidities.

These arm-chair revolutionaries are Monday Morning Quarterbacks of the worst kind, because they are too lazy to do their research, they are front runners and bandwagoners, and because they know they are using false arguments and false logic to attack people they claim to support, all in an attempt to further their own careers.

It’s time we started asking them the hard questions, and tuning them out when they can’t answer.