Budget Baselines and Diets

jaredbernsteinblog.com — Suppose you’ve been on a successful diet for the last month and you’re bragging about how much weight you’ve lost. Do you start counting that morning, and proudly proclaim “I’ve lost 2.5 ounces!?” Of course not. You start counting when you started dieting a month ago and brag on the 15 pounds you’ve shed since then. Yet, Congressional Republicans want to only count today’s ounces instead of last months’ pounds. In a Politico piece sent to me by a colleague (I can’t find the link), it’s reported that claiming spending cuts resulting from the 2011 Budget Control Act is verboten in the R’s world–they call it double counting. By their logic, any cuts President Obama agreed to today wouldn’t be counted tomorrow, so what’s the point? That’s one of them there rhetorical questions: apparently, the point is not serious negotiation–it’s fun with numbers, and I gotta tell ya Mr. Boehner, we’re really not having much fun out here.

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