One reader’s reaction to the fiscal deficit drama to begin

There will be plenty of reactions to the draft release of the fiscal draft proposal, but one caught my eye as I just came home. Reader HW at TPM has this reaction

I took a very quick look at this document and what’s amazing to me is that they came up with these draconian cuts in Social Security, which is off-budget and currently in the black, but have barely anything for Medicare, where the government is hemorrhaging money.

They have several pages of material with almost no concrete ideas that adds up to minor savings (they claim savings that rise to $47 billion in 2020, but $13 billion of that comes from vague promises like “reform the sustainable growth rate” and “enact tort reform.”)

If you look at the spending side of the federal budget, Medicare is the single item that drives growth out of proportion with the nation’s population and income growth. Yet these guys seem to be hacking away at every other part of the federal budget more to make room for Medicare rather than contain it.

One other thing: they call for a cap of 21% of GDP for revenues and spending. But doesn’t that exceed the mandate here? We are looking to these guys to tell us how to bring the budget into balance, not what the role and size of government ought to be. I would think liberals and conservatives ought to be able to agree in saying, who the hell are these guys to put their finger arbitrarily on the number 21% and tell us that’s where it should be (I’d assume conservatives would like to see it lower, and I don’t necessarily disagree with the number, but don’t know why we’d set it in stone)? Its like my accountant telling me how much my income should be, in addition to how I should balance my family budget.