Tea Party Would Cut $9 Trillion

[candycorn]

Scoffing at Washington's troubled effort to cut just $1.2 trillion in federal debt over 10 years, the Tea Party's own debt commission today unveiled a shocking plan to slash nearly $10 trillion over the next decade, in part by eliminating several federal agencies, balancing the budget by 2015, and killing foreign aid to unfriendly nations.

"Go bold or go home," says the report from the Tea Party Debt Commission. "Are you listening, Washington?"

The FreedomWorks-led effort started months ago by asking Tea Party members for ideas on what to cut from the federal budget. They ended up going much further than Congress or the president wants.

Their plan would cut spending by $9.7 trillion, and shrink the federal government from 24 percent of GDP to 17.5 percent, in line with the post-war norm.

Key initiatives include:

1. Repealing the president's health care reform plan.
2. Eliminating four cabinet agencies: Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Commerce and Education, and reducing or privatizing the EPA, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and TSA.
3. Ending farm subsidies, foreign aid to unfriendly nations, and student loans, or what the Tea Party report called "luxuries we can no longer afford."
4. Suspending pension contributions and cost of living adjustments to lawmakers when the budget is running a deficit.
5. Killing all congressional earmarks.
6. Cut federal employee pay by 10 percent and slash employee travel to $4 billion, half of what was spent in 2000.
7. Make the Bush tax cuts and the alternative minimum tax permanent.

"Imagine a plan that cuts, caps, and balances federal spending without raising taxes; that gives future generations control over their own retirement security; and that lifts the massive debt burden from our children's shoulders so they can know the American dream of ever-higher freedom and prosperity. And on top of all that, imagine that it's a serious, credible, plan generated by the grassroots. This is that plan," said the report.

Exclusive: Tea Party Would Cut $9 Trillion - US News and World Report

I don't think it will equal 9 trillion.

Show us the math.

 

[Toro]

The $9.7 trillion is not "real" spending. It is $9.7 trillion off the CBO baseline estimate.

Here is the plan

http://blogs.freedomworks.org/files/TeaPartyBudget.pdf

It breaks it down along these lines over 10 years.

Annually Appropriated $3.6T
SS $0.2T
Medicare & Medicaid $2T
Auto Pilot Programs $1.8T
Defense $2.1T

Some of it, the math doesn't work. For example, they assume that the GSEs will continue to lose money at the current rate and will cost the taxpayers $300B over the next decade. That won't happen since the housing market recover will eventually recover. Savings - $240B - also supposedly comes from eliminating unused federal space. Not sure how that will happen. $2 trillion comes from repealing "Obamacare," which isn't costing us anything now. They've identified $1T in waste in the defense department. Good luck. Another $1T comes from reducing "certain overseas military operations to 45,000 by 2015." I'm not sure where that is since they don't explain, Iraq and Afghanistan maybe.

They would cut taxes below the baseline estimate by $6.1T and offset that with sales of government land, assets and gold worth $0.6T.