Over the holiday weekend, Talking Points Memo's Brian Beutler highlighted this gem of a chart from the Senate Appropriations Committee:
As Hawaii Democratic Senator Daniel Inoyue explained in a statement, "Although non-defense discretionary spending in nominal dollars has increased, when taking inflation and population growth into account the amount contained in the FY 2011 Continuing Resolution represents no increase over what we spent in 2001, a year in which we generated a surplus of $128 billion."
In other words, when adjusted for population growth, the amount we spend on social programs, education assistance and a whole host of federal agencies --the spending that congressional Republicans have targeted for cuts -- remains virtually unchanged from a decade ago. Most new spending comes from larger military budgets and greater entitlement spending, itself a product of new programs (Medicare Part D) and an aging population. Insofar that we've had a "spending binge," it's in the form of massive tax breaks for the rich, which along with the Great Recession, have destroyed the government's revenue base. Adjusted for inflation and population growth, total revenues are lower than they were in 2001, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of GDP.
Washington's establishment pundits might hail the deal Democrats have proposed to Republicans, with its mix of nearly 5 dollars in spending cuts for every dollar in revenue, but it doesn't come close to actually solving the problem. The government needs revenue, and that means an end to Bush-era tax cuts for wealthy and middle-class Americans.
