About those ‘historic’ budget cuts: not so much

Posted by AzblueMeanie:

Remember last month when the Tea-Publican Congress held America hostage to leverage "historic" budget cuts before agreeing to pass the FY 2011 Budget? Despite all the gallons of ink and pixels used by the "lamestream media" to describe the budget deal as "historic," it turns out the media villagers got it all wrong (you're shocked, I'm sure). OOPS! Historic 'Spending Cut' Bill Increased Spending By $3 Billion:

How many billions of dollars in spending would Democrats agree to cut, without risking massive Republican defections, and, perhaps, a protracted government shutdown?

A few weeks after they cut the deal, we have an answer. It turns out the six-month spending bill Congress passed in April increased discretionary outlays through the remainder of the fiscal year by a bit over $3 billion. In other words, total direct spending will be higher by the end of September than if Congress had just set spending on autopilot for the remainder of the fiscal year back in April.

"Total discretionary outlays in 2011 will be $3.2 billion higher as a result of the legislation, CBO estimates–an increase of $7.5 billion for defense programs, partially offset by a net reduction of $4.4 billion in other spending," reads a just-released report from the Congressional Budget Office — Congress' non-partisan scorekeeper. Analysts there conclude that increase is due in large part to the fact that the six month spending bill shifted defense spending to more immediate activities, which means the bills will come due sooner than later.

When the deal went down in early April, both Democrats and Republicans characterized it as a historic spending cut bill — a triumph of bipartisanship and the first time in memory that the government significantly reduced spending. But the approximately $38 billion in advertised cuts spanned the entire federal budget, including locked-in "mandatory" spending programs, and it reflected reductions in "budget authority" — how much the government is allowed to spend — as opposed to projected "outlays" — how much the government truly will spend. When viewed more narrowly — how many fewer dollars will the government spend this year as a result of this bill — the results flip.

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"CBO had previously estimated that the full-year appropriation act will yield a net reduction of $0.4 billion in nonemergency outlays in 2011," the report says. "The comparison shown here is different: It includes emergency appropriations, excludes the effects of changes in mandatory programs, and incorporates adjustments to various estimating parameters that were applied to the appropriation act to make them consistent with the March 2011 baseline."

A footnote at the end of the report notes, "The extrapolation of 2011 appropriations does not include the effect of changes in mandatory programs that were included in the full-year appropriation act…. The net effect of such changes to mandatory programs over the 2012-2021 period is close to zero."

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[O]verall, the CBO finds that the bill Congress passed in April will result in about $122 billion in aggregate spending cuts over 10 years — and $183 billion in reduced budget authority.

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But that's just to say that in their first bite at the apple, Republicans got done [over] a 10 year time-frame a bit more than they hoped to accomplished by September. Ouch.

The Weeper of the House is going to have something to cry about when the teabaggers find out about how they were duped.