Older and Wiser

Carter Wrenn posted on February 13, 2013 10:48

After Tea Party candidates rolled to victory in 2010 they headed for Congress to cut spending, and late one night, six months later, President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner announced they’d made a deal to pass the biggest annual spending cut in history.

Now, two years later, it turns out the cuts were an illusion: Most of the spending that got killed, the Washington Post reports, was already dead – because President Obama and Speaker John Boehner cut money that was never going to be spent. They ‘cut’ $14.6 million that had been authorized to build the Capital Visitor Center – which had already been built. They ‘cut’ $375,000 that had been authorized for a road that didn’t exist. And cut $6 billion that had been authorized to pay for the Census in 2011 – but the Census ended in 2010.

A former Obama official also told the Post that both sides, both the President and the House Leaders, knew what they were calling cuts were simple authorizations that were never going to be spent.

The Tea Partiers got fusselled.

As Congressman Mick Mulvaney ruefully explained, looking back, “Many of the cuts…were smoke and mirrors. That’s the lesson from April 2011: That when Washington says it cuts spending, it doesn’t mean the same thing that normal people mean.”

Posted in: General, National Democrats , National Republicans , Issues

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