PAY - GO THE NEW SPENDING PLAN

Our Dear Leader today declared that Congress will not be allowed to spend a dollar, unless it saves a dollar somewhere else in the budget. Well Hallelujah, they finally see the light! Or do they?

Let's look at how the government saves money, specifically, Congress.

They use some tricky terms and funny accounting to create budget cuts, tax cuts, spending cuts. And I must admit, here is where they are the most creative in their thinking.

Say congress has 1 Trillion projected to be spent this year. Say program A has a projected spending of 100 billion. In reality, program A probably only needs 85 Billion, but you over projected just to be safe. But now you want to fund program B. Under the new rule, you need to save the money from somewhere else first. Well, you have 15 Billion extra appropriated for program A, so you cut 15 Billion from A, then spend it for B.

Now you have CUT spending by 15 Billion, and you have FUNDED your other program. Everyone is happy. Don't worry, if 15 Billion isn't enough to keep program B running, you can always appropriate more for it later. See, isn't cutting spending easy!

By the same token, if last year you had projected that program A was going to use 100 Billion, but in reality it only used 75 Million, than you can say HEY – we cut spending by 25 Million over here too!

Tax cuts work the same way. For example, Hey, we just gave you a fantastic life altering income tax break that will put $8 real dollars back in your pocket every week. Are we not wonderful?

What they don't mention is, Hey, we just raised the Federal fee's and taxes on your wireless phone service, your cable TV, and your electric bill, which will net us $10, a $2 increae over what we just gave you back.

See how tax cuts work. Are they not great?

If you ran a private business like this, you would be put in jail by the government, for a host of felony charges.

It's just more of the hypocrisy. And it will continue for as long as they can get away with it. I see this new policy as simply trying to make us, the little people, feel better about the government spending. I don't see anything changing in Congress.

An update - none of this applies to anything they are already talking about spending anyway, so there you go, it's just a snow job