Secretary Gates creates incentive program to find $7 billion in savings and unnecessary elements of Defense budget.  According to William J. Lynn III, the deputy defense secretary this is not just another effort at eliminating waste. This is an effort to change the way the defense department prioritizes its budget:

“You are not going to be able to do it just on pure efficiencies. You are going to have to eliminate lower-priority programs. You are going to have to find headquarters that you don’t think you need. You are going to have to find staffs that you think you can cut.”

 In a related story “fiscal” conservatives like John Boehner, frequently heard belittling others for their spending ways, did not step up to remove a $485 million anonymous earmark that was added to a House defense authorization bill. CNN reports:

 ”At issue is the alternate engine for the Joint Strike Fighter platform, a corporate subsidized boondoggle that has cost taxpayers $1.2 billion in earmarks since 2004. It is estimated to cost at least $2.9 billion more until its completion.”

Secretary of Defense Gates has advised President Obama to veto the effort if it makes it to the White House.

Michael Kinsley analyzes the motivations of the Tea Party Patriots:

What unites them is a more abstract resentment, an intensity of feeling rather than any concrete complaint or goal…

The Tea Party movement’s goals, when stated specifically, are mostly self-interested. And they lack poetry: cut my taxes; don’t let the government mess with my Medicare; and so on. I say “self-interested” and not “selfish” because pursuing your own self-interest is not illegitimate in a capitalist democracy. (Nor is poetry an essential requirement.) But the Tea Party’s atmospherics, all about personal grievance and taking umbrage and feeling put-upon, are a far cry from flower power. There is a nasty, sour, vindictive tone to the Tea Party that certainly existed in the antiwar movement and its offspring, but never dominated the atmosphere created by these groups…

To the TPPs, all of our problems are the fault of the government, and the government is a great “other,” a hideous monster over which we have no control. It spends our money and runs up vast deficits for mysterious reasons all its own. At bottom, this is a suspicion not of government but of democracy. After all, who elected this monster?

According to the Federal Bureau of Economic Analysis, Americans paid on  average 9.2% of personal income in taxes in 2009. Since 1950, the tax rate, including federal, state and local taxes (income, property, sales and other taxes) averaged 12%.

Americans hate taxes, and taxes have been cut. But, why does government continue to grow? Well it’s because the American people demand services at the same time they demand smaller government.  Republicans and Democrats both know this. Both parties spend like a teenager with a credit card trying to cater to their contituencies. The problem. Ask the typical American where they would cut spending and tell them their options are:

1. Defense and international security (21 percent of the budget, or $625 billion)
2. Social Security (21 percent of the budget, or $617 billion)
3. Major Health Programs (Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP: 20 percent of the budget, or $599 billion - $391 billion of it for Medicare)

What are Americans willing to cut? According to the Economist/YouGov poll  everyone agrees on cutting Foreign Aid, but most avoid the cuts that are needed most. (Futility of Budget Cuts )

Not a fan of Paul Krugman’s column in the New York Times, but today he correctly levels a charge against the GOP that is on target and deserved. I have often said that the Republicans are good with the bullhorn but over the past 10 years, when push came to shove over budget issues they were not willing to do the hard work. Krugman:

The idea — propounded by many members of the conservative intelligentsia, from Alan Greenspan to Irving Kristol — was basically that sympathetic politicians should engage in a game of bait and switch. Rather than proposing unpopular spending cuts, Republicans would push through popular tax cuts, with the deliberate intention of worsening the government’s fiscal position. Spending cuts could then be sold as a necessity rather than a choice, the only way to eliminate an unsustainable budget deficit.

O.K., the beast is starving. Now what? That’s the question confronting Republicans. But they’re refusing to answer, or even to engage in any serious discussion about what to do.

Krugman of course will argue against proposed cuts, but he has a valid point. The cuts will have to come from the very popular programs - Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. Defense, Social Security and Major Health Programs make up 61% of the budget*. This is where big government lives. For many years I have believed that - like Nixon going to China - it would take a Democrat to make headway in reforming Medicare and Social Security, but it will also require the willingness of a serious opposition. With the current GOP leadership of Mitch McConnell and John Boehner the opposition is not serious.  

Time to step up and do some heavy lifting, not just point fingers at the other guy.

* Defense and international security: 21 percent of the budget, or $625 billion; Social Security:  21 percent of the budget, or $617 billion; Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP: 20 percent of the budget, or $599 billion. ($391 billion went to Medicare)  

Source: Center for Budget and Policy Priorities