Budget part 2: Scope and Scale

House Republicans have made a lot noise over their decisions to cut specific funding and programs. In the debate over these details, it seems that it's easy to lose sight of the whole picture of the federal budget, so it seems a good first step is to look at the overall numbers to get some perspective. This Wikipedia article is a good place to start, and it has a nice (CC licensed!) pie chart:

Now keep in mind that the 2009 federal deficit was $1.42 trillion. That's about 40% of the above total. That's a huge number; you could completely kill two whole categories of that pie chart and still just barely balance the budget. True, 2009 may have been a high year what with special and hopefully temporary circumstances like the bailout, but the deficit is still a big chunk of the total budget. I'm pointing this out to encourage skepticism whenever someone says they can balance the budget by hacking away at line items. The deficit is a large problem that will only be dealt with through significant and systemic changes.

Let's get back to the budget, though, because there are a couple more things it's helpful to understand. There are two types of federal spending: mandatory spending and discretionary spending. Mandatory spending is spending that was passed into law by Congress, and is automatically spent each year without any need for special approval. Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid are the two biggest mandatory expenditures. Changes to mandatory expenditures require changes to the specific laws that call for them, and are generally not dealt with as a part of the budget debates you hear about in the news. Those have to do with discretionary spending. Discretionary spending is not called for by any laws, and so must be approved by Congress in each new budget. The defense budget is by far the largest contributor to discretionary spending, and the rest of discretionary spending is filled by familiar programs such as health and human services, veterans' programs, education, transportation, and many many more. See this chart from the article if you want to see some of those. By my count based on the chart above, 55% of federal spending is mandatory, and 39% is discretionary. (I'm leaving out interest payments on the debt.)

This distinction is important in order to understand what the budget debate, especially the most current possibly-shut-down-the-government debate, is really about. Although many people would like to reform or even remove Social Security and Medicare, that's a separate issue because those programs are mandatory, and it's not addressed as part of the yearly budget. Then there's another distinction that comes into play because no one, least of all Republicans, wants to limit the budget of the military. That means that most of the fuss people have been making over cuts involves solely non-defense discretionary spending. If you read enough news or pundits you'll see this phrase thrown around a bit. It's referring to the orange slice of that pie — only 19% of total federal expenditures. This is the slice that Republican leadership is so adamant about cutting down.

The obvious inconsistency here is that it is impossible to eliminate the deficit by reducing that piece. The deficit is double the size of that whole category! Now it's true that non-defense discretionary spending will have to be trimmed some (though there are reasons there's less waste in this category than in others; more on that later), but the singular and uncompromising focus on such cuts by House Republicans does not match the attitude one would expect from people who claim to be concerned about the deficit first and foremost. The deficit is such a big problem that fixing it will require cuts from multiple categories, including defense, and it will even require an increase in revenue.

Moreover, in the face of a trillion dollar plus deficit, it would seem to be reasonable and humane to compromise on items such as a billion dollars for food and health care assistance to poor kids and pregnant women, or $1.6 billion to the NIH, which is responsible for cancer research. These programs make a significant impact in people's lives and in our nation's future, and they're not contributing significantly to the deficit — the numbers just don't add up!

There's only one way I can see to make sense of these quantitative inconsistencies without supposing that Republicans are completely ignorant of these facts, which I highly doubt. That is to deduce that the deficit is in fact not their #1 priority, but that they are perfectly willing to use it as a propaganda prop in order to persuade voters to get behind their plan to cut things they've wanted to cut all along. This tactic is deceitful, and I can't imagine it is in the best interests in the long run of the American people.

Immoral Budget Decisions part 1: Introduction

I recently re-tweeted something from MoveOn.org about the latest Republican budget proposal, and then I followed it up with a tweet echoing that I actually did for once agree with MoveOn's slogan that the proposed cuts are immoral. This led to a stimulating discussion with a fiscally conservative friend of mine, and as a result of that I've decided it's a good idea to flesh out my ideas in a series of blog posts. This first post will give the gist of my overall argument, and subsequent posts will be focused on compiling references I've drawn on and evaluating the details of my points.

I like analogies, so I'll start off with a story. Imagine two brothers, one of whom is pretty well off, and another who has just gotten into some dire financial trouble. The second brother goes to the first and asks for some money, and the first brother says to him, "I'm really sorry, brother, but I'm having a bit of a budget crisis myself and I really can't afford to help you out right now."

Is the first brother making an immoral choice at this point? Not necessarily. Although I certainly advocate making sacrifices for the sake of helping others, with all we know about the brothers now it could very well be that the well-off brother is telling the truth, and so I wouldn't want to pass judgement at this point.

Now suppose the story continues with the poor brother walking by a car dealership and spotting his brother chatting with a dealer about a sport car. As his brother goes into the dealer's office to close his purchase, the poor brother says hello to the well-off brother's wife and mentions that he didn't know their family was in need of a new car. "Oh we don't need that car," she says, "I just haven't been able to get him to shut up about it. We don't even have the cash on hand to pay for it, so he's financing the thing. I told him he should reconsider but he just wouldn't budge."

Does this part of the story change how we should view the first brother's choices? I would argue that it does, and very much so. For one, the well-off brother is choosing to send himself further into debt at a time when getting out of debt would give him the ability to help his brother. His own financial health impacts not only him but others in his life as well. Perhaps most telling, though, is the fact that even though the well-off brother claims to be in a crisis, he still feels confident enough to take on the extra debt of a new car. If he can finance a car, though, why can't he finance his brother? If he really doesn't need the car, why wouldn't he forgo that purchase and perhaps even take out a loan on behalf of his brother if he's that confident in his credit? Surely that would be a much better reason to take on debt. The other things the first brother does with his finances informs us about his motives, and in this case I think it would be fair to call his priorities and choices immoral.

This analogy is of course imperfect, so I advise against extrapolating too much from it. It does illustrate the central point of contention I have with the GOP budget proposal though. They are slashing already bare-bones programs that provide needy children lunches, pregnant women health care, and homeless veterans shelter. At the same time, much larger and more expensive areas of waste exist on the federal level that they are completely unwilling to discuss. Subsidies to industries such as oil conglomerates who are posting record profits, inefficient and unregulated contracting to private firms, and even superfluous defense projects the Pentagon brass rejects as wasteful are all examples of areas where cuts are either morally neutral or even positive, and Republicans are largely unwilling to take these on. All this, and I haven't even mentioned their virulent fight against a meager 3% increase on the marginal tax rate for the top tax bracket!

Republicans like to talk a lot about balancing the budget and reducing the deficit, goals I definitely agree with. However if we're going to do so, we should have all options on the table, and we should prioritize cutting true waste over cutting programs that actually help people. Putting the needy on the chopping block ahead of real trash is more than irrational and shortsighted, it is immoral.

Stay tuned for follow up posts with details and references!