Center for American Progress budget wonk: ‘We’ve already essentially adopted that Ryan budget’

[Emit]

‘We’ve already essentially adopted that Ryan budget’

Michael Linden is managing director for tax policy at the Center for American Progress and one of the smartest left-of-center budget wonks around. We talked on the phone Tuesday afternoon about the policy substance behind the government shutdown. A lightly edited transcript follows.

The continuing resolution (CR) that the Senate passed, the one that's ostensibly the Democratic position in this dispute now, spends $217 billion less on discretionary programs than Obama's budget would have. Break that number down for me. Where's it coming from?

Surprisingly, while it's a little bit more of a cut for non-defense spending, it's not all non-defense. Some of the difference is defense as well. The Obama budget had $600 billion in it for non-defense discretionary spending, and the Senate CR says $467 billion. It's a $133 billion difference. But that leaves a big chunk in the defense as well.

And it's mostly coming because of sequestration.

It's sequestration but also the Budget Control Act's cap. One of the things that's interesting about that chart is that the Senate budget resolution is a pretty far move from the initial democratic position. At that point, we were already pretty far away from where Democrats started.

When you mention the "original" Paul Ryan budget, which one are you referring to?

The one we were using was the one they released when they took over, in early 2011.

So we've been cutting spending at a faster pace than Paul Ryan wanted to when Republicans took over Congress.

On discretionary spending at least, that's right. And that's what we're pointing out. We've already essentially adopted that Ryan budget, and obviously that was not seen at the time as a moderate approach to government spending.

Part of why it hasn't sparked more outrage, I imagine, is that so many safety net programs like food stamps and Medicaid were exempted from it. But there are some parts of the safety net that aren't excluded. What are the big programs for low-income people that are getting hit?

The sequestration is hurting a lot of things, but in terms of the safety net the big ones are WIC — nutrition assistance for women, infants, and children, the only major nutrition program affected by the sequestration – then Head Start, and then housing assistance. It doesn't get as much attention as Head Start, but all housing assistance is discretionary spending as well. Rental assistance, tenant-based and project-based, all of it. Those are the main ones affected, even though most of the low-income assistance programs are exempt.

~snip~

Cont'd: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/02/the-shutdown-is-ridiculous-the-fight-just-below-the-surface-is-not/

[tosh]

1. Yes, that WAS the compromise...

and the effin' "Media" should be pointing this out.

[bhikkhu]

2. Its not generally known, because the media has been repeating the "out of control spending" meme

or at least giving air-time to the RW who never stopped repeating it for a minute. They don't even care that they got what they wanted, that spending is well under control and the deficit is projected to be declining for the next 8 years.

[fredamae]

3. Plus they gave them

Permanent Sequester cuts! That's Before the Debt Ceiling giveaways AND isn't there are a lot of original sequester cuts, new ones-(ones we might have forgotten about?-if I understand it properly) kicking in on Jan 1st.....

[ck4829]

4. Republican version of compromise: We agree to give Republicans 100% of what they want