RightChange: Pulling The Trigger On Medicare & Defense

If you do not believe Republicans want to trim entitlements and Democrats want to hack Defense, then allow us to point you towards the debt ceiling deal between House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and President Obama.  The deal raised the debt ceiling by the highest amount ever – more than $2 trillion in exchange for an automatic cut of $350 billion to Defense spending and ZERO cuts to entitlements.  In addition to the automatic cuts, the deal put together a team of lawmakers known as the “supercommittee.” They had the task of cutting $1.5 trillion from the budget over 10 years or face the ultimate cut ($1.2 trillion over 10 years) known in the political world as the “trigger.”  Since the committee failed, there will be an additional $650 reduction from Defense spending and $123 billion from entitlements.  This trigger is being pulled and aimed straight at our national security.  From a budgeter’s perspective, that is considered a disproportionate cut.

After the dumpster fire that was the supercommittee, President Obama immediately recognized Republicans were going to raise the issue that the cuts to Defense were not proportionate to the cuts to Mandatory spending.  They did, and Obama responded accordingly.  He vowed to veto any proposal to stop the trigger from hacking from the defense budget.  Let’s do the Math and see how proportionate those cuts are.

According to the OMB, here is the FY 2013 estimated spending on Defense and Entitlements (Mandatory Spending):

Defense: $882 billion

Mandatory: $3.805 trillion (including interest)

Let’s say Obama vetoes any attempt to block the Defense trigger; that cuts an additional $455 billion from the Defense budget over 10 years.  That is a 5.10% reduction in Defense spending

Let’s say the Democrats fail at blocking the Mandatory trigger; that cuts $170 billion from their budget over 10 years. That is a .04% reduction in mandatory spending, less than half of a full 1%.

Entitlement spending has a budget 431.41% higher than our national security and has to work with a .4% reduction in spending.  The trigger is clearly being pulled on our national security.

We used these numbers from Politico to determine the total amount of the “trigger:"

So what does this mean?  It means that Obama and the Democrats refuse to address the real drivers of our debt.  They would rather shift public focus away from the big-ticket items.   It is their goal to balance the budget on the back of national security and discretionary spending.

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