The GOP's Budget Cutting Gimmick

GOP House Whip Eric Cantor's new "YouCut" project which asks taxpayers to vote on which federal programs should be cut falsely creates the impression that balancing our budget will be virtually painless.

Eric Cantor, the Republican House Whip has a new YouCut project on his website. It asks visitors to vote on which of five presented federal programs should be cut.  The smallest program this week amounts to a mere $200, 000 per year. Mr. Cantor could save taxpayers more by giving up his own salary and benefits. Even if you could vote “all of the above”, the grand total is still less than $6 billion over five years. If you could do that each and every week for a whole year, you would still cut the deficit by less than 5%. Then why play these games at all?! Yes, this web page may make Democrats look bad for defending all that spending, but it is also quite deceptive in the sense that it creates the impression that it is possible to balance the budget virtually painlessly.

If the Republican Party really wants to govern, it has to offer real solutions to real problems. We are (finally) at a point where Social Security taxes no longer cover all benefit payments. This basically means that whenever the government sends out monthly Social Security checks it has to borrow money from Chinese Communists to make sure the checks don’t bounce. Baby Boomers are now starting to sign up for Social Security and Medicare and they can be expected to draw their (ever increasing) benefits for a quarter century on average. Have we already received a firm commitment from Beijing to underwrite all that spending? If not, then maybe the GOP should start offering ideas on reforming entitlements and controlling medical costs.