Oh, Yeah, and Then There's This Fucking Horseshit Too

Obama's claiming that he'll "cut" $2 trillion from the budget over ten years.

You don't really think he's going to cut spending, do you?

Of course not.

So here's how he comes up with $1.6 trillion of his $2 trillion in "cuts:" He takes the 2008, peak-of-the-surge cost of the Iraq War as our permanent Iraq War spending baseline. He extends that out ten years -- including goosing it down the line for inflation.

Then he notes that he's ending a war which was actually pretty much ended by our troops (and the Iraqis, too) by defeating Al Qaeda and ending the insurgency.

Then he says, "Hey, man, look -- every year I'm going to be saving money on those Iraq War costs! Count it as a 'cut'!"

Um, yeah.

What the fuck -- am I retarded? Am I giving off a pinhead kinda vibe?

Am I wearing a brightly colored shirt with a silly picture on it and mismatches socks? What?

What am I doing, exactly, to send out the signal that I'm a mental fucking defective?

Watch the video.

As Commentary notes, even by Washington standards, this is "unusually disingenuous."

Why not go further? Within two years, according to Obama's rosy estimates, no further TARP or capital injections into the banking system will be needed. So, if we spent $2 trillion on that this year (let us say), why not say that for the eight years after we recover we'll be "saving" two trillion per year, for a total savings over ten years of $16 trillion? (Plus interest!)

Thanks to Dave @ Garfield Ridge. Oh, and he also sends along this link about that price-leading-to-overestimation-of-a-product's-quality thing I mentioned, in case you need some kind of cite for it.

PS: Obama's cultists are making much of the fact that Obama seeks to put Iraq War costs back into the regular budget. They hail this as an advance for transparency, accountability, and honesty.

That's a lie.

He wants to put the exceptional and temporary costs of the Iraq War into the regular budget so he can fraudulently claim $1.6 trillion in "savings" down the line.

In Related News... The United States has "cut" over $75 trillion from its budgets over the past 230 odd years by not fighting the fucking British every goddamn fucking year.

posted by Ace at 07:36 PM

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