I just saw a report that the GOP is proposing a budget that would result in 5.8 trillion in cuts over a 10-year period. And this supposedly includes significant changes to Medicare and Medicaid. Why do politicians, whether Democrat or Republican, always report these cuts as occurring over a 10-year period? Maybe because they don’t want to admit that they’re cutting very little up front, and leaving the big cuts until later, when they’ll be repealed or overridden anyway?
Update 4/5: Paul Ryan published this piece today, saying their proposed budget would cut $6.2 trillion over the next ten years. And he even includes a nice little graph, comparing their budget to the status quo. Only problem is, so far as I can tell from the graph, the status quo and the proposed budget are identical for the next few years. And by that time, who knows what could happen! Am I wrong? I would love to be shown that I’m wrong and that finally we have politicians willing to propose significant cuts that take effect immediately.