Budget Battle- not Armageddon & pretending otherwise doesn’t do much except wreck our credibility

[kpete]

It’s true that, macroeconomically speaking, this is the wrong time to be cutting spending, but let’s face it: $38 billion in spending just isn’t that big a deal at a macro level. It may have a negative effect, but it’s a pretty small negative effect.

So let’s put the macro-level considerations aside for a moment and just look at the cuts from a pure budgetary perspective. There are a couple of things we can say. First, domestic discretionary spending has gone up about 4-5% a year in real terms over the past decade (and a bit faster than that in the past few years), and it’s difficult even for a hardcore liberal to pretend that this level of growth leaves no room for even modest cuts. Second, given the amount of smoke and mirrors in last week’s budget agreement, the level of actual spending reductions it contains is probably no more than about $20 billion. Maybe not even that much. This is just not Armageddon, and pretending otherwise doesn’t do much except wreck our credibility with the public on fiscal issues.

http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/04/getting-real-about-deficit
http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/04/13/enough-with-the-rationalizations-the-2011-budget-deal-is-no-prize/

.............

multiple choice:

a) "it's small potatoes from either side of the aisle"

or:

b) pretending that the deal carries no pain doesn’t do much except wreck our credibility with the public on accurately perceiving reality.

ok, i am over it, kpete
lets move on...?