Debt Ceiling Cuts "Almost As Deep As Those In Paul Ryan's Slash-and-Burn Budget"

[amborin]

Welcome to the United States of Austerity


The Detroit Public Schools book depository, built in the 1930s and
designed by famed architect Albert Kahn, now stands abandoned, its
floor covered in rotting textbooks. Thomas Hawk/Flickr


The debt ceiling deal..... makes deep, painful, and lasting cuts throughout the federal government's budget. What's on the chopping block? The numbers tell the tale.

The Obama-GOP plan cuts $917 billion in government spending over the next decade. Nearly $570 billion of that would come from what's called "nondefense discretionary spending." That's budget-speak for the pile of money the government invests in the nation's safety and future—education and job training, air traffic control, health research, border security, physical infrastructure, environmental and consumer protection, child care, nutrition, law enforcement, and more.

.......The White House's plan would slash this type of spending nearly in half, from about 3.3 percent of America's GDP to as low as 1.7 percent, the lowest in nearly half a century, says Ethan Pollack, a senior policy analyst at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. Pollack's calculations suggest the cuts in Obama's plan are almost as deep as those in Rep. Paul Ryan's slash-and-burn budget, which shrunk non-defense discretionary spending down to just 1.5 percent of GDP. The president has claimed that the debt deal will allow America to continue making "job-creating investments in things like education and research." But on crucial public investment, Obama's and Ryan's plans are next-door neighbors. "There's no way to square this plan with the president's 'Winning the Future' agenda," Pollack says. "That agenda ends."


......The president has boasted that his deal with the GOP will usher in an era featuring "the lowest level of annual domestic spending since Dwight Eisenhower was president." ............... "There just won't physically be the funds available to protect drinking water and to ensure there's clean air to breathe."

snip

McHugh adds that the bill does not include an extension of federal funding for unemployment benefits, which is set to expire at the end of the year. All told, he fears that already weak job market could be dealt a massive body blow by the Obama-GOP debt deal. "To have this big of an austerity proposal in Washington is disconcerting and misguided," he says.

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Nor is this the final round of cuts. The Obama-GOP deal also sets up a bipartisan deficit reduction committee that must identify, by the end of 2011, an additional $1.5 trillion in cuts.....

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.......EPI's Pollack says. "It's going to be devastating."


http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/united-states-of-austerity

[LaydeeBug]

1. Stop criticizing the President!! He did the best he could. No one could have done a better job.

:eyes:

[bvar22]

2. Shut Up and Eat your Austerity Peas, you whiner!

The "Uniquely American Solution"



"If we don't fight hard enough for the things we stand for,
at some point we have to recognize that we don't really stand for them."
--- Paul Wellstone

photo by bvar22
Shortly before Sen Wellstone was killed

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Look squirrel! Oh did not work...

expect a lot of distraction though.

By the way should those be boled peas or creamed peas? Hell can we afford the cream?