It’s one thing for Democrats to offer phony budget cuts, given their excessive ways, but for the new Republican majority in the U.S. House to play the same game is unacceptable, according to conservative James Valvo, director of government affairs at Americans for Prosperity.

 

The GOP promised during the election campaign to lop off $100 billion from the federal budget. Although they claim to have offered a plan to do just that, about 40% of their cost savings is really smoke and mirrors, argues Valvo.

 

What’s wrong with the Republican plan is that it relies on phantom cuts proposed by President Barack Obama.

 

“Acutely aware of the combined power of the media on the left and Tea Party activists on the right attacking the Republicans, as the number shrank Speaker [John] Boehner and Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan decided to shoot for the $100 billion in cuts,” wrote Valvo. “In an effort to reach the higher number, they bizarrely decided to compare their cuts to the president’s budget request, a number that is irrelevant except for political spin.”

 

So both sides are now claiming they will save the taxpayers $41 billion—money that isn’t really in the budget to cut. Valvo says the number comes from the gap between what Obama wanted to spend on non-defense, non-security discretionary spending in fiscal year 2011 and what the country is really spending on those areas.

 

“No one cut even one thin red dime; all that happened was a timid House GOP handed Senate Democrats a political talking point,” he says.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Both Parties Claim to Cut Nonexistent $41 Billion (by James Valvo, Daily Caller)