Announcing how he intends to pay for his Stimulus 2.0 “jobs” plan today, the President was quick to call for a “balanced approach” to deficit reduction. Far from “balanced,” his plan falls entirely on the backs of taxpayers and fails to address the government’s real deficit problem—overspending—by proposing fake or improbable spending cuts.
Spending Cut Gimmicks ($2.5 trillion)
- $1.1 trillion in war “savings” – The President counts money that was never going to be spent on wars that are scheduled to end. This is like claiming the government is still saving money from World War II, Korea and Vietnam simply because we are no longer engaged in them.
- Takes credit for debt deal savings – The President attempts to take credit for the $1 trillion in savings required by the Budget Control Act, which has already been enacted.
- Additional interest savings – President Obama claims $430 billion in deficit reduction from interest savings, pretending that spending can be counted as a deficit reduction if it is fueled by borrowing instead of from soaking taxpayers.
Unlikely Spending Cuts ($580 billion)
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Health Savings: The plan claims $320 billion in Medicare and Medicaid savings, 90 percent of which is expected to come from increased payments from providers. As we have seen with the so-called “doc fix,” these kinds of promised savings in federal health care programs never materialize.
- Other health care savings are presumed to come from increased co-pays for beneficiaries, which conveniently don’t take effect until 2017.
- Supposed mandatory savings make up the other “new” savings proposed under the plan. These include increased fees on aviation, program integrity efforts meant to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse and such ephemera as “restoring state fiscal responsibility.”
Posted by Mattie Duppler 
on Monday, September 19, 2011 4:12 PM EDT
on Monday, September 19, 2011 4:12 PM EDTTo follow Mattie Duppler's RSS feed click here. To follow them on Twitter, their handle is @MDuppler