President Obama announced $17 billion in "spending cuts" Thursday.
But as anyone who actually read the bill would recognize, the alleged cuts mean almost nothing, according to the Heritage Foundation's Brian Riedl, who cut through the misdirection earlier today at The Corner (bolds are mine):
..... Virtually every dollar “saved” would automatically go towards new spending instead of deficit reduction.
Here’s why: The president already proposed a specific discretionary spending level (which included these proposals), and Congress has already approved a budget that would spend $1,086 billion on regular discretionary spending in FY 2010. The discretionary savings proposals affect only the composition of such spending. Thus, even if the entire $12.5 billion in discretionary spending cuts are enacted, the savings would automatically be plowed into other programs to maintain discretionary spending at that pre-set $1,086 billion level. So this exercise is about reorganizing — not reducing — government.
Even on the entitlement side, $3.6 billion of the $4.6 billion in 2010 savings comes from phasing out the subsidized student-loan program, with all savings redirected into expanded Pell grants. There is virtually no deficit reduction from these reforms.
If anyone in the establishment media caught what Reidl did, I haven't seen evidence of it. Among many others, it's not this LA Times story; it's not at this piece at the Caucus blog at the New York Times; a Poltico story fails to even mention the total size of the federal budget... [snip]
Obama's spending increases are real. As shown earlier, the spending "cuts" are just a mirage.
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