Robert Greenstein: Budget Deal, Though Imperfect, Represents Significant Accomplishment & Merits Support

Source:Center on Budget & Policy Priorities- Speaker John Boehner: "I'm no longer dead man walking".

Source:The New Democrat

Looks like the parents for the House Republicans finally came home from their long extended vacation and took control over their house and children. But if I had kids like the House Republicans, especially the Tea Party Caucus, I might leave them at home and not come back myself. The adults are finally in the room and in charge in the House Republican Caucus. Speaker John Boehner, has nothing else to lose at this point and decided to make a deal with President Obama and the Senate. And avoid another political suicidal government shutdown.

Which is too bad for a lot of bloggers and pundits, and comedians including myself, who were looking forward to covering government shutdown rallies in Washington in November. With Teddy Cruz, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity, the House Tea Party Caucus, etc, waving signs saying, “so more government until Obama surrenders!” Or perhaps, “goes back to Africa!” But what’s good for the country is not always what’s good is not what’s good for comedians. Comedians, make a living making fun of bad situations and people being stupid, including stupid people. But the problem with stupidity and idiots is that they tend to have victims.

At risk of sounding serious and intelligent here, (perhaps not that big of a risk) the American economy just when it looks like it’s about to take off again especially with holiday season approaching right after Halloween, needs certainty. They need to know that the leaders is Washington can tie their shoes without tying them together accidentally and tripping as soon as they stand up. Every time we go through a potential default, or a government shutdown the markets and Wall Street take a beating. And it tends to cost us economic growth and hurt the job picture as well as well as the deficit going up as a result. With the government shutdown being avoided, because House Republicans finally learned how to tie their own two shoes, the economy can breathe easy and things can look normal again.

Judith Solomon: Medicaid at 50: A Critical and Evolving Pillar to U.S. Health Care

Source:Center On Budget & Policy Priorities. President Lyndon B. Johnson (Democrat, Texas) signing Medicare into law in 1965, with President Harry S. Truman (Democrat, Missouri) at his side.

Source:The New Democrat

Medicaid, is a very important health insurance program for people in poverty including the working poor, but also people who are disabled and senior citizens. The fact that it is also for seniors, I believe shows a problem for Medicare. Since Medicare is supposed to be for our senior citizens. But that might be for a different topic. But Medicaid is critical, but as long as we have it we need for it to be financially sustainable meaning affordable and the best way to do that is to pay for it. And no longer have this system where the Federal Government tells the states that they must have this program and only gives the states less than half of what they need to actually run the program. Without a revenue source to pay for their share and leaving the states to figure out how to pay for the rest.

If you are familiar with this blog, you it is against corporate welfare. And part of that welfare is business's getting away with not paying for their employees cost of living. The fact is if you're a cashier at a fast rood restaurant, or a grocery store, you're an essential employee. Because your employer can't do business without you and your fellow cashiers. And cashiers would just be one example of that. Good luck running a nice sit down restaurant without waiters and cooks. Or stocking a grocery store without stockers. Running a pizza joint without cashiers, cooks and drivers. And there are plenty of more examples like that.

So what I would do is what I would do with all public assistance programs and make them financially self-sufficient. Instead of having hard-working middle class taxpayers not only have to figure out how to pay for their health care and other life essentials, but have to pick up the tab for low-income workers have employers cover their employees Medicaid, public housing, food assistance, etc. Or give them an option and say you don't want to pay these payroll taxes on your employees, give your employees the money to pay for these life essentials instead. And I would happy to cut taxes on business's in exchange. But the idea that big employers who make a lot of money, but don't share much of that success even the basics like cost of living and instead pass those costs onto hard-working middle class taxpayers, is insulting.

Again, I would do this with all of our public assistance programs, but since this is about Medicaid, this is how I would reform it and make it financially not just affordable, but self-sufficient. Tell employers that they need to cover their low-income workers. Either through Medicaid with a payroll tax, or provide private health insurance that is just as good as Medicaid. Again, instead of allowing big for-profit employers the ability to pass their employees cost of living onto hard-working middle class taxpayers. As well as give low-income workers the option of taking either Medicaid, or private health insurance that their employer would cover part of that is just as high quality.

CBPP: Robert Greenstein: Next Round of Deficit Reduction

Source:Center On Budget & Policy Priorities President Robert Greenstein.

"In recent days, policymakers, pundits, and the media have debated whether the “fiscal cliff” budget deal was a victory or defeat for the President or congressional Republicans, progressives or conservatives, rich or poor, the economy or the deficit — you name it.  Most of the commentary is unpersuasive, however, for one basic reason:  the fiscal cliff deal is only one stage in a broader budget battle, and you can’t render a legitimate judgment on that effort until the next stage — which includes the scheduled across-the-board spending cuts known as “sequestration” and, especially, the need to raise the debt limit — is completed.

What’s important at this point is not assessing winners or losers but, instead, understanding what lies ahead.  That’s because what lies ahead is truly frightening.  Indeed, it could (though it doesn’t have to) produce outcomes that are far more damaging to the economy, sound fiscal policy, and low-income and vulnerable Americans than anything that policymakers and experts feared from the fiscal cliff.

So, let’s look ahead to the next 60 days and their potentially monumental ramifications for our country, our economy, and our people.

The Big Challenges and Threats

As many fiscal policy analysts agree, policymakers must generate sufficient deficit reduction to achieve the key economic goal of stabilizing the debt over the coming decade so that it stops rising faster than the economy grows.  Policymakers generated about $1.7 trillion in deficit reduction in 2011 ($1.5 trillion in discretionary spending cuts, plus the associated interest savings, primarily through the Budget Control Act, or BCA).[1]   That left a need for another $2 trillion in deficit reduction to stabilize the debt.[2]

Entering the fiscal cliff negotiations, there were two main barriers to achieving deficit reduction in an equitable and balanced manner that honors the principle, as enunciated by the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (“Bowles-Simpson”) and reflected in major deficit-reduction deals of recent decades, that deficit reduction shouldn’t harm low-income and vulnerable Americans or increase poverty — and that doesn’t disrupt the economy:

Apparent Republican unwillingness to raise taxes; and

The destructive notion, sometimes called the “Boehner rule” (for House Speaker John Boehner), that Congress should only raise the debt ceiling if it’s accompanied by at least a dollar in new spending cuts for each dollar that the debt limit is raised.[3]   Under this rigid formula, cuts in programs that are critical for future economic growth or that serve the nation’s poorest people count, while savings from curbing unproductive, special-interest tax subsidies do not. 

Moreover, the Boehner rule would require the most radical transformation of government in nearly a century; if policymakers enacted all of the cuts in the severe, House-passed budget of House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, they would still eventually fall short of adhering to the Boehner rule.  They would have to eliminate more and more of the basic functions of government over time.

The Lost Opportunity

The fiscal cliff negotiations appeared to offer a singular opportunity for more rational, balanced, and comprehensive deficit reduction.

Republicans needed the agreement of President Obama and the Democratic-run Senate in order (1) to extend President Bush’s tax cuts (which were scheduled to expire at the end of 2012), including any tax cuts that Republicans could salvage for people who were making over $250,000 a year, and (2) to preserve as much as they could of the estate-tax break for the nation’s wealthiest estates that Republican leaders extracted from the President in their negotiations over the year-end tax bill of 2010.

The White House’s challenge was to use this leverage to broker a larger deal that contained enough deficit reduction to stabilize the debt over the coming decade, secured an adequate revenue contribution toward that goal (one that extended well beyond the revenues generated just from letting the Bush tax cuts expire for people making over $250,000), and raised the debt limit for at least several years.  That’s what the President tried to achieve in his December negotiations with Speaker Boehner.

At one point, Obama and Boehner appeared close to agreement, with Obama close to achieving his goals.  But then Boehner, pressured by other House Republicans, blew up the negotiations and opted for “Plan B.”

After Plan B’s demise, negotiations resumed — but on a very different playing field.  Gone was any discussion of raising the debt ceiling or of a larger deficit-reduction package.  Instead, the two sides opted for a deal that raises income, capital gains, and dividend taxes only on couples making over $450,000 ($400,000 for singles); limits itemized deductions and phases out personal exemptions for couples making over $300,000 ($250,000 for singles); makes permanent most of the estate-tax break originally enacted in 2010; extends improvements in the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income working Americans, and in the American Opportunity Tax Credit for middle- and lower-income college students, for five years;[4] extends federal emergency unemployment insurance benefits for a year; and delays sequestration for two months.  All told, the deal makes permanent 82 percent of the Bush tax cuts.[5]

Consequently, the playing field for the next round is very different.  It’s a terrain filled with land mines and enormous danger.

The Next Round

The nation faces three related and very daunting challenges in the next round, all of which will play out over the next two months.

Achieving further deficit reduction:  The President and Republican congressional leaders both seek more deficit reduction, but they are miles apart on how to get it.  The White House notes that policymakers have already enacted large cuts in discretionary spending, which amount to $1.5 trillion over the next ten years (as compared to the fiscal cliff deal’s approximately $600 billion in revenue increases).  Quite reasonably, the White House calls for a dollar in additional revenue increases for each dollar in additional spending cuts.[6]

Republicans, however, have already declared that they flatly reject this concept.  Although Speaker Boehner offered $800 billion in revenue increases in his 2011 negotiations with President Obama and indicated that he’d go somewhere close to $1 trillion in the recent negotiations, Republican leaders now insist that “the tax issue is off the table,”[7] “the tax issue is finished, over, completed,”[8] and they won’t agree to a dollar more in tax increases beyond the roughly $600 billion just enacted.  They insist that all of the additional deficit reduction must come from budget cuts.  They say that, with the bulk of the Bush tax cuts now permanent, President Obama no longer has any leverage over them in the tax-raising arena.

Averting sequestration:  Sequestration will hit March 1 unless the President and Congress delay it further or replace it with something else.  Republicans are insisting that policymakers must replace every dollar of across-the-board cuts that’s cancelled with a dollar of spending cuts.  The White House, consistent with its dollar-in-taxes-for-a-dollar-in-spending principle, wants to replace sequestration with a package that includes equal amounts of revenue increases and spending cuts.

Raising the debt limit:  Most important, many Republicans insist that they won’t raise the debt limit unless legislation to do so is accompanied by massive spending cuts.  To raise the debt limit by, say, $1 trillion — enough for about one year — would require $1 trillion in spending cuts under their “Boehner rule.”  To raise the debt limit to last two years would require about $2 trillion in spending cuts.

The debt limit fight is key — key to the future of the economy, the budget, and programs for low-income and disadvantaged Americans.  The White House and some Democratic congressional leaders signaled a willingness to “go over the fiscal cliff” and into January if they could not reach a satisfactory budget agreement with congressional Republicans by December 31.  They believed that, if in place a few weeks and then cancelled, the tax increases and spending cuts that the fiscal cliff would trigger would not harm the economy in a substantial, lasting way.

But, Administration pronouncements on the dangers posed by failing to raise the debt limit suggest that the White House appropriately views those consequences as far more dire, for failure to raise the debt limit so that the federal government can pay its bills would eventually trigger a default, potentially sending interest rates on U.S. securities permanently higher and possibly even causing a global financial crisis.  Moreover, the President has said that he lacks authority, as some constitutional scholars have proposed, to invoke the Constitution’s 14th Amendment and essentially ignore the debt limit.

All of this greatly emboldens Republicans, who appear to believe that they are in a much stronger position in this evolving fiscal contest.  They believe that by holding the needed debt-limit increase hostage and threatening economic chaos if their demands aren’t met, they can bring Obama and Democrats to their knees — forcing them to accept very big spending cuts without any revenue increases, as they did in the debt-limit crisis during the summer of 2011.

The President has said that he will not negotiate fiscal policy as a condition for raising the debt limit, a very well-justified stance if you believe — as I do — that it’s grossly irresponsible for legislators of either party to hold the debt limit hostage and threaten economic chaos if they don’t get their way.[9]   But whether the President can secure a debt limit increase — which will require 218 votes in the House and 60 in the Senate — without acceding to huge spending cuts is unclear at this point.  Tea Party Republicans think this is their best chance in ages to secure big cuts in core New Deal and Great Society programs.  And with Republicans seemingly committed to this course (and nursing their wounds over the fiscal cliff deal) and the President maintaining that he won’t be blackmailed, the likelihood of a harrowing showdown — one that threatens the economy far more than the fiscal cliff ever did — is very high.

Why Low-Income People Are at Heightened Risk

Some Democrats dismiss the threat that the Boehner rule poses, saying that Republicans ultimately will back off of it because they won’t publicly identify the specific program cuts they would make to produce the savings that would raise the debt ceiling for a reasonable period of time.  That view, alas, is mistaken.

To be sure, Republican congressional leaders seem unwilling to propose specific cuts in the two main, popular middle-class entitlement programs — Medicare and Social Security — that would produce large savings over the next ten years.  They want Democrats to propose such cuts, or at a minimum, they want to find a way to put some Democratic fingerprints on them.

But, Republican leaders appear more than willing to specify deep cuts in two other parts of the budget — core entitlements for low-income Americans, like Medicaid and SNAP (formerly known as food stamps), and the annual caps on funding for non-defense discretionary programs.[10]   The Ryan budget featured trillions of dollars of cuts in these two areas.[11]   House Republicans may well try to pass legislation in February to raise the debt limit for a year or so, accompanied by cuts primarily in low-income assistance programs and in the caps on non-defense discretionary programs.  They will likely re-pass, in the new Congress, the legislation that they passed twice in the last Congress (most recently on December 20) to cancel the first year of sequestration and replace it with spending cuts that hit low-income programs disproportionately.[12]

These battles, just starting, will be brutal.  Attacks that disparage or demonize programs for low-income and vulnerable Americans may escalate in the weeks ahead in an effort to help lay the groundwork for this strategy.

It’s not clear how policymakers will resolve these showdowns.  The President’s ability to tie an extension of various Republican-backed tax cuts to an agreement on a larger balanced package — one that also raises the debt limit and averts sequestration — now is gone.  How the President can secure needed Republican votes in the Senate and House for measures that raise additional revenues — and for measures that raise the debt limit outside of the harsh and regressive confines of the Boehner rule — is very unclear.

But facile assumptions that President Obama will simply roll over in the face of these pressures seem quite unrealistic.  So, an extremely high-stakes confrontation — one that could culminate in an actual default, a government shutdown, or even a constitutional crisis — is definitely not out of the question.

What lies ahead will likely dwarf the fiscal-cliff dramatics that the nation has just witnessed.  Our leaders, our system of government, and the patience and wisdom of the American people will be severely tested.  And, for no one will the stakes — and the risks — be higher than for the tens of millions of our least fortunate citizens, those who lack the luxury of well-connected lobbyists and the access that big campaign contributions bring to help protect them on Capitol Hill in the dangerous weeks ahead." 

From the Center On Budget & Policy Priorities

CBPP: James Honey: Protecting Public Assistance in Deficit Reduction

Source:Center On Budget & Policy Priorities fellow James Honey.

"At some point, the President and Congress will likely agree on a deficit package that includes both up-front savings and a target for more savings that they would achieve in 2013 by changing tax and spending policies.

The package also will likely include a backstop mechanism that’s designed to ensure that the 2013 savings come to fruition even if the President and Congress fail to agree on those policy changes.

In designing that mechanism (e.g., automatic across-the-board spending cuts), policymakers will face a decision that’s received little attention of late — whether to continue a quarter-century tradition of protecting low-income programs or to break faith with that tradition and risk serious harm to the poorest and most vulnerable Americans.

Ever since the 1985 Gramm-Rudman-Hollings (GRH) law, with its annual deficit targets and its across-the-board spending cuts (or “sequestration”) to enforce them, policymakers have exempted low-income mandatory (or entitlement) programs whenever they’ve included backstop mechanisms of that kind in deficit-reduction packages.  That tradition includes both versions of GRH (1985 and 1987), the pay-as-you-go laws of 1990 and 2009, and the sequestration mechanism of last year’s Budget Control Act.  Most of these laws were enacted on a bipartisan basis.

Were policymakers to ignore this tradition, at risk would be such key safety net programs for the nation’s most vulnerable families and individuals as Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as the Food Stamp Program), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Supplemental Security Income for poor seniors and people with disabilities, child care assistance, free and reduced-price school meals for low-income children, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Subjecting these programs to a backstop mechanism would impose enormous hardship on people already living on the margins, far below the poverty line, and it would likely result in increases in homelessness, hunger, and the number of people who can't access needed health care.  The effects on poor young children could be long-lasting.

The crafting of a backstop mechanism, and what’s in it, is part of a larger question: who should bear the burden of deficit reduction?

In the plan by its co-chairs, former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles and former Senator Alan Simpson, the President’s fiscal commission concluded that any deficit reduction plan should “protect the truly disadvantaged.”  Similarly, a blue-ribbon private commission chaired by former Office of Management and Budget Director Alice Rivlin and former Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici proposed a plan that avoided cuts in low-income mandatory programs other than Medicaid.  The plan produced in July 2011 by the Senate’s bipartisan Gang of Six did the same.

Those who believe that deficit reduction should not increase poverty, inequality, the ranks of the uninsured, or other hardships for our most vulnerable citizens should honor the Bowles-Simpson principle to that effect.  Policymakers should not overturn more than 25 years of precedent, and instead should maintain the historic exemption for low-income entitlement programs from automatic cuts under a backstop mechanism." 

From the Center On Budget & Policy Priorities

I agree with James Honey that we shouldn't gut programs for low-income Americans, especially when economic times are tough (like right now) simply for deficit reduction. But the idea that there are no savings in any of these programs that can be achieved, that could be used for deficit reduction, is at best far-fetched and worst, simply partisan. 

You lower poverty and unemployment in America, you would automatically reduce the deficit, because you would have fewer Americans on public assistance. The way to do that, while at the same time putting people to work and back in school, is to have work and educational requirements, that could come with childcare assistance, for everyone whose not eligible to retire yet and physically and mentally able to work full-time, to go to work and back to school, while retaining their public assistance benefits, as they're working their way off of those programs, with work and education. 

CBPP: Michael Leachman: 'Fact Sheet: Reducing Federal Deficits Without a Significant Revenue Increase Would Shift Substantial Costs to States'

Source:Center For Budget & Policy Priorities- with a look at the Federal deficit.

"If it fails to include significant new revenues, a major legislative package to shrink federal deficits would almost certainly make substantial cuts in federal funds that support states and localities.  These cuts likely would force states and localities to reduce the quality and reach of their basic public systems — schools, clean water facilities, and law enforcement activities, for example — or to raise new revenue or cut other programs to continue meeting these needs.  Either way, the result would be a large cost shift from the federal government to states and localities.  By contrast, if Congress adopts a balanced deficit-reduction plan that includes significant new revenues, the resulting cost shift to states and localities almost certainly will be smaller.

States Provide Services That Are National Priorities

States and localities provide public services that address national priorities.  For example, they educate the nation’s children and build and repair the nation’s roads, bridges, airports, and public transit systems.  They also undertake a wide range of other important functions, including protecting waterways from sewage contamination, protecting public safety, reducing homelessness, revitalizing run-down neighborhoods, providing technical job skills training to community college students and others, and responding after disasters.  Some 87 percent of the nation’s public employees — teachers, police officers, child abuse case workers, road construction engineers, and many others — work for state or local governments.

States, Weakened by the Recession, Cannot Absorb Large New Cost Shifts

State revenues for these services were deeply damaged by the recent recession, the worst for state finances in 70 years.  Since the recession hit, states have closed budget shortfalls totaling well over half a trillion dollars.  In the last four years, states and localities have shed more than 600,000 jobs.  While state revenues are beginning to recover, they remain about 6 percent below pre-recession levels after adjusting for inflation.  It will be several years more before states recover fully.

With their own budgets so seriously damaged, states cannot absorb massive new cost shifts from the federal government.  Significant federal funding cuts would force states to lay off still more people and to cut spending for schools, roads, or other public services in others ways or else raise substantial new revenue in-state to continue addressing these needs.  Either way, the result would be a large cost shift from the federal government to states and localities, a cost shift that would hit states hard at a time when their budgets already are deeply wounded.

Federal Deficit Reduction That Does Not Include Significant Revenue Likely Would Shift Substantial Costs to States

Many federal policy makers agree in broad terms that, as they seek to reduce the deficit, cuts in Social Security and Medicare that affect current beneficiaries should be limited and defense spending should not be cut much, if at all, below the spending caps imposed by the 2011 Budget Control Act.  If the savings from Social Security, Medicare, and defense — which together account for well over half of non-interest federal spending — are limited and the deficit plan does not include significant revenues, federal support for programs operated by state and local governments will stand out as one of the few remaining sources of large potential savings.

That’s because a large part of the federal budget outside of Social Security, Medicare, defense, and interest payments on the national debt — 41 percent of what’s left — consists of grants to states and localities.  Hence, if significant new revenue isn’t included, a major legislative package to shrink federal deficits almost certainly will cut deeply into state and local aid, shifting to the states more of the costs for educating children and providing other public services." 

From CBPP

CBPP: Policy Basics: Where Do Our Federal Tax Dollars Go?

Source:CBPP- talking about the U.S. Federal budget.

"The Center's Tax Policy Analyst, Chye-Ching Huang, and Director of Federal Tax Policy, Chuck Marr, discuss where our federal tax dollars go.  Topics include defense and international security assistance, Social Security, and health insurance and safety net programs.  

Chuck Marr, "Obviously, paying taxes is an obligation.  It's not always fun.  But I think as you've seen in this video if you step back and think about where your tax dollars go -- whether it's for gear for a soldier, whether it's to provide a new hip to an elderly person, or a college scholarship to a kid to be the first person in his family to go to college -- I think you'll feel a little bit better."

From the Center On Budget & Policy Priorities

Our Federal tax revenue goes to pay for defense, entitlements, and payments to on our national debt. Thats what most of the Federal budget funds, with money left over to cover things like education, agriculture assistance, environmental protection, and other programs.

CBPP: 'Mitt Romney Budget Proposals Would Necessitate Very Large Cuts in Medicaid, Education, Health Research & Other Programs

Source:Center For Budget & Policy Priorities with a look at Mitt Romney's budget plan.

"Governor Mitt Romney’s proposals to cap total federal spending at 20 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and boost defense spending to 4 percent of GDP would require very large cuts in other programs, both entitlements and discretionary programs. 

This update of an earlier analysis is based on updated economic and budget projections that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued this summer and additional information that the Romney campaign has provided on his budget proposals.  The resulting estimates of the required budget cuts are somewhat smaller than the ones we released on May 21, but they are still very deep.

For the most part, Governor Romney has not outlined cuts in specific programs.  But if policy­makers repealed health reform (the Affordable Care Act, or ACA) and exempted Social Security from cuts, as Romney has suggested, and cut Medicare, Medicaid, and all other entitlement and discretionary programs by the same percentage to meet Romney’s overall spending cap and defense spending target, then they would have to cut non-defense programs other than Social Security by 22 percent in 2016 and 34 percent in 2022 (see Figure 1).  If they exempted Medicare from cuts for this period, the cuts in other programs would have to be even more dramatic — 32 percent in 2016 and 53 percent in 2022.

If they applied these cuts proportionately, the cuts in programs such as veterans’ disability compensation, Supplemental Security Income (SSI) for poor elderly and disabled individuals, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps), school lunches and other child nutrition programs, and unemployment compensation would cause the incomes of large numbers of households to fall below the poverty line.  Many who already are poor would become poorer.

The cuts in non­defense discretionary programs — a spending category that covers a wide variety of public services such as elemen­tary and secondary education, law enforcement, veterans’ health care, environmen­tal protection, and biomedical research — would come on top ofthe substantial cuts in this part of the budget that are already in law, due to the discretionary funding caps in last year’s Budget Control Act (BCA).  By 2022, the cuts under Governor Romney’s budget proposals would shrink nondefense discretionary spending — which, over the past 50 years, has averaged 3.9 percent of GDP and never fallen below 3.2 percent — to 1.8 percent of GDP if Medicare shares in the cuts, and to 1.3 percent of GDP if it does not.

These cuts would be noticeably deeper than those required under the austere House-passed budget plan authored by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI).  (Romney’s nondefense cuts are deeper because his proposal increases core defense spending — the defense budget other than war costs and some relatively small items such as military family housing — to 4 percent of GDP, while the Ryan budget does not.)  Over the coming decade, Romney would require cuts in programs other than core defense of $6.1 trillion, compared with $5.0 trillion in cuts under the House-passed budget plan."

Source:Center For Budget & Policy Priorities

The Romney budget is essentially the Ryan budget. But the way to save the safety net, especially Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and so- forth, is not by gutting them but making them real Welfare Insurance programs, only intended for the people who need them, self financed, so they don't put so much pressure on the rest of the Federal budget, including the national debt. And turning them over to the States to run, along with reforming the defense budget and tax code. There's the deficit vanishing and we can finally start paying down the national debt, once we obtain some real sustaining economic growth.

Center on Budget & Policy Priorities: Jared Bernstein & Chye-Ching Huang on Tax Rates & Economy

Source:Center On Budget & Policy Priorities- Jared Bernstein & Chye-Ching Huang.

"Jared Bernstein and Chye-Ching Huang discuss the Center's new, comprehensive analysis of recent findings on the economic effects of raising federal income taxes on upper-income taxpayers as part of a balanced effort to reduce budget deficits." 

From CBPP