Albuquerque Journal and their so-called news about the budget

The Albuquerque Journal published a front page article by Wintrop Quigley predicting dire consequences for New Mexico due to the automatic budget cuts.  Rather than address the real problem, a failure of a bi-partisan committee to deal with runaway spending, the Journal chose to outline the consequences of unmanaged spending reductions.


Here are the facts.  Federal spending has increased outrageously under the President's administration, the Democratically-controlled Senate, and the former Democratically-controlled House of Representatives (House).  Attempts by the GOP-controlled House to roll back spending were rejected by the Senate.  As a consequence  of a requirement to raise the deficit ceiling, a small reduction in the overall budget was agreed upon that would result in automatic cuts if a bi-partisan panel could not agree on specific cuts.  Yes, the result is a decrease in spending but only a decrease in "discretionary spending.  Considering that the spending decrease is $110 billion out of $3.8 TRILLION, a reduction of just 2.8%  in 2012, I think we will survive.


While much has been said about the Obama excesses, and there have been many, we were on an unhealthy growth in the deficit before he took office.  To the credit of the Obama critics, he did make it worse.  Below are the forecasts from Mr. Bush for the years 2007-2012 compared with Mr. Obama's for the years 2007 through 2017.  These are taken from two documents on the Whitehouse.gov site, Mr. Bush's from http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2009/pdf/hist.pdf and the latest from Mr. Obama at http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2013/assets/hist.pdf.  You will see that spending under Mr. Bush was expanding at a rate of $122.3 billion per year while Mr. Obama is increasing the spend rate at $155.1 billion per year.  Under any circumstances, the amount of the budget decrease enacted last year is less than the projected increase under either president.

In conclusion, we are increasing spending at a rate that is not sustainable in growth.  Mr. Obama wishes to increase taxes while the Republicans want to cut spending.  The truth is between the two extremes.  A judicious cut along with a revenue increase that hits all of us, not just the rich, not just the middle class, all of us, would likely be accepted.  The Republicans are suggesting tax reform.  The Democrats are on board with that but will have to compromise on spending to get the tax reform.  Also, the Democrats are going to have to be willing to increase taxes across all income levels.  Continuing to get a larger share out of the wealthy will stagnate the economy.