Reactions to the Debt Limit Deal - By the Percentages

To my regular readers: I apologize that it has taken nearly a week for me to offer my response to the debt ceiling deal that was passed by Congress last week. As my notes on my “Treatise on Biblical Conservatism” that was posted last week stated, I was on vacation and unable to pen a response. However, the silver lining to this delay is the ability to see the reactions to the deal that happened in the past week and thus the ability to respond to them. Quite frankly, there is too much to deal with in one day’s posting, so we’re going to analyze this deal over the next few days.


Last week, Democrats and Republicans agreed to increase the nation’s debt limit by $2.1 Trillion in exchange for cuts in the amount of $2.5 Trillion. Since that deal was struck, there have been many, many commentaries on the deal. Nearly a week after the deal was signed; it’s time for a Biblical Conservatism reaction.

It’s an insufficient deal, pure and simple. Many of my fellow Conservatives are calling this a bad deal, and I’m forced to agree. It’s bad for America, because it failed to begin to deal with the real spending issues our nation is currently facing in any real way. Yes, there were $1 Trillion in immediate caps in spending, which are insufficient, but at least a positive step, and a demand for $1.5 Trillion to be cut in the following 10 years. On the surface, it seems like a start, albeit a very slow start.

Yet there are problems with this deal. Today, we’ll deal with the first issue, the deal by the percentages:

Let’s be generous and assume those cuts happen. After all, there is a provision in the deal that has been passed into law that requires those cuts to happen…so if the committee that has been created by the law does not enact those cuts, they will be automatically triggered. (There’s a huge issue with the nature of those triggers which we will discuss later.) We’ll also be generous to Congress and assume that the GOP will, at the very least, disallow any new spending by Obama and the Democrats, and thus we will assume that the 2011 spending levels (remember, there was no budget, thanks to Obama and the Democrats) will be maintained for the next ten years. So we’ll assume a $3.82 Trillion in expenditures annually and $2.17 Trillion in incoming revenue, meaning an annual deficit of $1.65 Trillion.

So, if we simply assume maintenance of those amounts, we’re staring down the barrel of $16.5 Trillion in new deficits (and thus new debt) in the next ten years. With the $2.5 Trillion in cuts spread across the next ten years, that’s a mere $250 Billion in cuts per year. It’s not very much. It leaves us with $1.4 Trillion in deficit spending each year. With the cuts included in the debt deal, we are down to a mere $14 Trillion in new deficit spending and thus new debt in the next 10 years. That means, with these cuts, we’re down to just under DOUBLING our debt in the next 10 years. That is not only unacceptable, it is absolutely irresponsible!

Liberals are guaranteed to try to tell you that we can make up that difference by, what else, taxing the rich, but friends, that is a lie. We cannot make up $1.4 Trillion in budget deficits by taxing the wealthy. It’s been said many times that if we were to confiscate every dollar earned over $250,000 per year and it would not make a dent in that deficit. It’s not going to make a difference.

Cutting a lousy $250 Billion each year is NOTHING. It’s not going to save this country from bankruptcy. Obama and the Democrats are not willing to make the cuts that need made. There is not enough money to keep programs like Social Security and Medicare alive for my generation. I’m paying social security taxes every paycheck, and I can basically guarantee that I will never see a dime of that money back, because right now Obama and the Democrats want to keep buying votes on the backs of the American taxpayer.

The Republicans aren’t getting off scot-free either. Speaker Boehner cut a deal that isn’t doing enough. I will grant them a bit more grace because I honestly believe a better deal would have happened with a Republican Senate and President. That being said, the GOP has a severe losers mentality. We are constantly on defense. Even though 2/3 of Americans supported the Cut, Cap and Balance plan, the GOP accepted this bad deal.

Americans are on our side, yet the Republican Party keeps acting like we have to eat the crumbs off the table. To be more specific, the old guard Republicans are used to accepting the crumbs off the table. I’ve had enough of it, and I know you have too. The Tea Party, on the other hand, has stood up for what was right and did their best to protect the American people.

I will continue to say that a third party is not the answer. A third party means Obama wins a second term. Ronald Reagan famously stated that what we need is not a third party, what we need is a revitalized second party. The Tea Party has business to conduct, no question. The place to conduct it is not going to be in the general election, but in the primaries.

Speaker Boehner needs to face a primary challenge, not because he isn’t Conservative enough…I believe in his heart he truly is a Conservative…but because he is a political coward. He’s afraid of the media saying mean things about him. He’s afraid to not be a part of the political elite. There are Conservatives in the House of Representatives who won’t cave. Paul Ryan is one. Another, if she doesn’t get the GOP nomination for President, anyway, is Michelle Bachmann. There are others as well.

Make no mistake about it, the answer is not for the Tea Party to become a third party. The answer is for the Tea Party to BECOME the Republican Party. Two election cycles at best, and we’ll be the GOP. That means no more bad debt deals, no more bad budget deals, no more political games. That, my friends, is the answer.

Tomorrow, we’ll continue discussing the debt deal by discussing the automatically triggered cuts that will go into effect if the bipartisan committee does not come up with the necessary cuts for the next ten years.