56% to 31%: More embraced cuts in government services than higher taxes

Yeah, no argument on that one either....those are definitely 2 slices that can be removed right away.

 

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/fed_spending_2011USrn

Federal Spending by year.

2007-2.73 trillion
2008-2.98 trillion
2009-3.52 trillion $787 billion stimulus passed.
2010-3.46 trillion
2011 3.60 trillion

 

thats correct

 

Why do you believe immigration into the US is a problem for our economy, which is one of the largest in the world? We have run massive surpluses and massive deficits all the while having immigrants come to our country, even illegally.

 

isnt 3.46 lower than 3.52?

 

It is but it is also a higher than 2.98. And if you look at federal spending over the long term, it never goes down. So even when the folks in D.C. talk about spending cuts, there never are any long term cuts.

The just don't increase spending as much as they had projected to increase it by.

So if we kept all Federal Depts. at the same spending level for say 5 years, they would claim a to have cut $800 billion when they have not cut a thing.

 

And wouldn't you know that is when the Republicans took the house. 3.6 the next year is why many conservatives are pissed at the GOP. Even though an 80 billion increase well below past averages, it was still an increase.

 

yes federal spending normally increases.....but the stimulus has not been built into baseline budgeting...otherwise the spending couldnt have declined the year after it

 

2010 was still under Dem control.....gop won in november but didnt take over until 2011.

so dems reduced spending....1st year with a GOP house? yes it increased.

 

That looks to be correct. My mistake. The Dems reduced spending by 60 billion after increasing it by 540 billion in 2009 and 250 billion in 2008.

Either way no one in Washington is talking about long term cuts. And cutting 787 billion could still be done by removing the stimulus increases of 2008-2009.

 

How much of that is due to simple gains in population?

 

how do you remove money we already spent? you just proved its not built into yearly budgets, as the budget went down the next year!

 

The base line, what they use to say if there is a cut or not, is the last years budget plus inflation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseline_(budgeting)

The jump to look at is from 2007 to 2009. It was a 28.94% increase in spending. Inflation from 2007 to 2009 was 3.5%. From 2009 to 2011 it was 4.8%.

So based on the 2007 spending levels, you should have this:

2.73 trillion spent in 2007. Take that as your base line, since it was before either stimulus, and they should have started 2009 with a base line of 2.825 trillion. They spent 3.52 trillion that is 694 billion over the base line (the stimulus was 787 billion).

If you extrapolate that, 2.825 trillion out to 2011, they should have spent 2.961 trillion. Instead they spent 3.6 trillion or 639 billion over the base line.

So take the 787 billion out and they could have ended up 148 billion below the base line.

Just because they spent less from 2009 to 2010, does not mean that 2010 baseline was not calculated from the 2009 spending numbers, it just mean that they came in under the base line.

If the stimulus was just a one time deal, and the projected budget was the previous years spending plus inflation, we would have spent 639 billion dollars less in 2011 and 588 billion less in 2010. For a grand total savings of 1.227 trillion dollars.

 

Population gain is not the force, it is inflation. But even if we increased for inflation only, we would have spent 1.227 trillion during 2010 and 2011 combined.

 

Why would an increase in population not be one metric, instead of purely economic criteria such as inflation? Public goods and public services must still cost more due to any increase in the population which may require more, rather than less of those goods and services.

 

Well thats why it is called a baseline. The politicians see to it that population, big donors, special interests and the like get added to the baseline.

Either way, when you here reporters, politicians and the like talk about cuts, thay are only talking about a reduced increase in spending. And when they talk about something only adding 2% to , lets say the EPA's budget, they are talking about adding 2% to the inflation adjusted increase.

 

How about the drug war?

 

how about it? and the war on poverty, the war on illiteracy and all the other wonderful wars on social issues we have had....

 

How much is going to be cut from the Drug War, instead of social services that actually promote and provide for the general welfare of the United States?

 

Eliminating baseline budgeting itself would be a great start. There is no way that a previously planned 10% increase that was pared down to a 5% increase should justifiably be called a cut.

But that is one of the many bad things baseline budgeting allows.