Sorry guys, Kent Conrad thinks we need a lot more deficit reduction
by digby
President Obama’s debt reduction goals are at least $1 trillion too modest, according to the Democrat who chaired the Senate Budget Committee until the end of last year.
“To get us on a path that is declining in terms of debt as a share of gross domestic product requires a package of about $5 trillion total,” former Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., told reporters during a Fix the Debt press briefing today at the National Press Club. “If you look at [the Congressional Budget Office’s] most recent numbers, that’s about the size of the package that we need, somewhere in about the $5 trillion range, to get this debt going down as a share of the economy. And we’re still going to have debt, at the end of this period, publicly held debt of 70 percent of GDP. That’s 100 percent of GDP as gross debt.”
President Obama is only shooting for $4 trillion in debt reduction. “Over the last few years, Democrats and Republicans have come together and cut our deficit by more than $2.5 trillion through a balanced mix of spending cuts and higher tax rates for the wealthiest Americans,” he said during his weekly address on Saturday. “That’s more than halfway towards the $4 trillion in deficit reduction that economists and elected officials from both parties say we need to stabilize our debt.”
Over the last few years, Democrats and Republicans have come together and cut our deficit by more than $2.5 trillion through a balanced mix of spending cuts and higher tax rates for the wealthiest Americans.
Really? Does this look balanced to you?
That’s what passes for balance in Kent Conrad’s mind. I’m going to guess that he’d consider another trillion in spending cuts and slashing Social Security to add up to a 50/50 split. (Let’s not even talk about the fact that austerity is the worst thing to be doing right now.)
I guess I find it kind of hard to take a budget “guru” seriously when he can’t even do simple arithmetic.
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