Selected Denver Post blog posts

[Cathy Mitchell]

In my opinion, "Smartest Person Ever" needs a new moniker, but the facts provided by dbsb3233 are quite revealing of what a "government cut" really is.

 

5 points     (9 votes)

Re: Article Discussion: Stocks plunge as economic, Europe worrie

by dbsb3233 

Smartest Person Ever wrote:Look, people, enough with the fautrage.

You've been warned for months, if not years, that cutting spending during a recession will cause the economy to take a nosedive.

Don't act like you weren't.

Except that spending hasn't been cut in the current economy. Not really, and not significantly. The vast majority of the "cuts" in the recent deal are back-loaded for years down the road.

Here's what total federal spending looks like for the last few years ($M):

2008 2,982,554
2009 3,517,681
2010 3,720,701
2011 3,833,861

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy11/hist.html

The "cuts" that have taken place in FY2011 have only been in the neighborhood of a few billion. And they're off of an autopilot increase pace that was far higher, resulting in what are still net spending INCREASES.

The real numbers show rather dramatic INCREASES in spending during this recession/recovery period, not cuts. So if you're going to blame what's happened with spending, then blame goes to what really happened -- spending INCREASES.

Political slogan for the decade: IT'S THE SPENDING, STUPID!