Something Missing in Deficit Deal?

By Ruth Flower on 08/02/2011 @ 05:30 PM

Tags: Budget

The good news -- I guess -- is that Congress agreed on something to allow the debt ceiling to be raised.

But there seems to be something missing.

Three things caused the debt to rise out of control in the last decade:

(1) the U.S. fought two wars without counting them in the budget and without raising adequate revenues to cover the expense, putting more than a trillion dollars on the national "credit card,"

(2) temporary tax cuts that were supposed to address the recession following the 9-11 attacks were continued way beyond their expiration dates, costing about a trillion dollars, and

(3) health care costs spiraled upwards, affecting huge parts of the federal budget -- federal employee health care, military health care, veterans' health care, Medicare, and Medicaid.

The "deal" doesn't deal with any of those. War spending was put back on the credit card as "emergency" spending, even though language elsewhere in the bill carefully defines "emergency" as a situation that is "unanticipated," "sudden," "unforeseen," and "temporary."

The over-aged tax cuts -- even for the wealthiest individuals and corporations -- are still in place, keeping U.S. tax revenues at an historic low compared to the size of the economy.

And the only proposals put forth in this Congress to cut health care spending have been to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which saves $210 billion over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

There was an awful lot of hullabaloo about raising the debt ceiling, and a lot of spending cuts demanded in payment. But those who spoke on the floor of the House and Senate about how "we don't have a debt ceiling problem, we have a debt problem" don't seem to be lining up to address the basic problems of too much war spending and too little revenue to meet the nation's actual needs.

See a summary of the debt deal and FCNL's recommendations.