Why the Public is OK With Spending Cuts

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Greg Sargent points out today that most of the public is on the side of Republicans when it comes to the budget cuts in the debt ceiling deal:

Sixty five percent approve of deal’s spending cuts. But it gets worse. Of the 30 percent who disapprove, 13 percent think the cuts haven’t gotten far enough, and only 15 percent think the cuts go too far. One sixth of Americans agree with the liberal argument about the deal.

Well, hell, I’m not sure I blame them. The debt ceiling deal doesn’t specify where the cuts are going to come from, it just sets a cap on discretionary spending over the next decade. And although the cap does make cuts compared to our current spending levels — which have ballooned partly because of George Bush’s first-term spending spree and partly because of the Great Recession — compared to 2000 spending levels, it’s hardly draconian. Using the numbers in the text of the law for spending levels, and making some reasonable assumptions about future inflation (2% per year) and future population growth (1% growth per year), my back-of-the-envelope calculation puts real per-capita discretionary spending at the following very rough levels:

  • 2000: $2,350 per year
  • 2021: $2,650 per year

(These are in 2005 dollars because that’s what BEA uses.) Given our fragile economy, I think it’s crazy to be talking about any spending cuts in the next couple of years. Looking farther out, though, it’s hard to get too outraged over discretionary caps that still leave spending at a substantially higher level than we had in 2000. Maybe that’s why the public is OK with all this.

(The follow-on cuts, which are supposed to come from the Supercommittee in November, would reduce these numbers further. At that point you might start to see real per-capita cuts. But we’ll have to wait and see how that all works out.)

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate