Tea Partiers: 'Cut spending!' 'Which spending?' 'Uhhh...."

Tea Partiers: 'Cut spending!' 'Which spending?' 'Uhhh...."

by Laura Clawson at Daily Kos

http://www.dailykos.com/#

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The fraction of ignoramuses who thought Congress should not raise the debt limit have some really fun theories about why this would be a good idea. Because, y'know, then the government would have to make cuts that are totally possible to make, and this could happen really fast in time to avoid a default that might not be so bad after all. In the Florida district of Rep. Ted Yoho, who believed default would bring stability to world markets, Business Insider's Brett LoGiurato asked around and found that, among people who want to cut government rather than raising the debt limit, the top answer of what to cut was foreign aid. All one percent of the federal budget worth of it.

"Doesn't matter," said David Biddle, a state committeeman in the Florida GOP. "Stop sending it abroad, and start taking care of our own."

Again, dude, one percent of the budget. Also, which of "our own" are we taking care of in this scenario? Quite a few of the people who LoGiurato interviewed also wanted to cut food stamps, so apparently taking care of our own is less of a priority for them or they don't consider hungry Americans to be "our own." And if you eliminated the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, meaning no food stamps for anyone, not children, not seniors, not disabled people, not anyone, that would be another two percent of the budget (a percentage that will decline if Republicans let the economy improve). Pressed for more, this genius suggested federal arts funding. The budget of the National Endowment for the Arts is—wait for it—0.012 percent of federal discretionary funding.

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What to cut, then? Medicare? Social Security? Those programs won't be cut and, according to Biddle, anyone who suggests it is employing "scare tactics."



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