When Republicans and Democrats announced last week they'd come to a last-minute budget deal to avert a government shutdown, they said they'd agreed to $38 billion in spending cuts. The exact figure was important, because Republicans had promised their tea party supporters they'd go further--$100 billion was the original pledge, reduced to $61 billion in the House budget passed in February. So they were at pains to present $38 billion as a good first step.
But an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that the deal, which passed Congress yesterday, will cut spending for the year by just $352 million—less than 1 percent of the much-touted $38 billion figure. In fact, when money for emergency military action is factored in, spending may actually go up this year. How can that be? The CBO said that $13-$18 billion of the "cuts" represented money that only existed on paper, in the form of IOUs to government agencies, and wasn't likely to be spent in the near future, or perhaps ever. Other cuts went for projects that wouldn't have paid out for several years—so the money would eventually have been spent, just not this year.
This is a tricky one. On the one hand, many of these cuts will take effect eventually, just not this year. On the other, even when all is said and done, it seems certain that the $38 billion figure won't pan out. So we'll put the claim this one right in the center of our gauge: midway between airtight, and totally bogus.http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110415/ts_yblog_thelookout/closer-look-lead-codices-spending-cuts-and-the-deficit-problem
