OPINION: Myth Of Spending Cuts
Tuesday, October 18, 2011 at 9:44AM
From The Heritage Foundation, I’m Ernest Istook. How often have you heard the claim that the economy is slowing down because the feds keep cutting spending? It’s being widely promoted—as though all spending were good. The claim is totally false—and here’s the biggest reason why: Spending is actually going up and has not been reduced at all. The claims of cutbacks are compared against plans that government had made to increase spending—so when spending goes up, but not as fast as planned, it’s labelled as a spending cut even though more money is actually going out of the Treasury. Treasury Department figures show that federal spending rose in 2011 by $120-billion even as Congress claimed we were spending $38-billion less. So you can’t blame the economy on less government stimulus, and you can’t trust the numbers being tossed around by a lot of politicians. From The Heritage Foundation, I’m Ernest Istook.
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