The Positive Impact Of Sequestration

On Sunday, Stephen Moore posted an article at the Wall Street Journal about the positive aspects of sequestration. The bottom line in the story is that because of sequestration the federal government is shrinking.

In fiscal 2013, the sequestration will save the government more than $50 billion.

The article explains the potential future impact of sequestration:

In other words, Mr. Obama has inadvertently chained himself to fiscal restraints that could flatten federal spending for the rest of his presidency. If the country sees any normal acceleration of economic growth (from the anemic 1.4% growth rate so far this year), the deficit is on a path to drop steadily at least through 2015. Already the deficit has fallen from its Mount Everest peak of 10.2% of gross domestic product in 2009, to about 4% this year. That’s a bullish six percentage points less of the GDP of new federal debt each year.

Discretionary spending soared to $1.347 billion in fiscal 2011, according to the CBO, but was then cut by $62 billion in 2012 and another $72 billion this year. That’s an impressive 10% shrinkage. And these are real cuts, not pixie-dust reductions off some sham baseline. Discretionary spending as a share of the economy hit 9.4% of GDP in fiscal 2010 but fell to 7.6% this year and is scheduled to slide to 6.4% in Mr. Obama’s last year in office.

There are still major problems with entitlement programs going broke (I would like to repeat myself here and say that Social Security is not an entitlement program. If you are going to call it an entitlement program, just give everyone the money they have paid into it over the years and stop payments.). Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will eventually have to be reworked in order to make them viable, but I seriously doubt that will happen under a Democrat president. Partial privatization of all three programs would extend their viability, but would need politicians willing to take a political risk for the good of the country. Right now that’s not what we have in Washington.

 

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