Republicans are Crazy and Nobody Cares, Part 754

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Jared Bernstein notes that if he’s elected president, Mitt Romney has promised to “immediately move to cut spending and cap it at 20 percent of GDP.” That’s crazy with the economy so sluggish, but in fact, it’s even crazier than that. Here are budget projections for 2013 from the OMB:

  • Medicare: $534 billion
  • Social Security: $807 billion
  • Other mandatory: $858 billion
  • Interest: $320 billion
  • Defense: $675 billion
  • Total: $3,194 billion

The first four items are mandatory and Romney can’t do anything about them, and I think he’s made it pretty clear that he doesn’t plan to cut defense spending. These five items collectively amount to 19.06% of projected GDP in 2013.

In other words, Romney is proposing that everything else in the budget be immediately cut to 0.94% of GDP. That’s all he has left to fund the FAA, the border patrol, the FBI, overseas embassies, highways, disaster relief, the SEC, the court system, NASA, prisons, national parks, school lunches, flood control, medical research, and everything else in the domestic discretionary budget. That’s an 87% cut in those programs.

This is the guy who used to run Bain Consulting? It doesn’t look to me like he can even read a balance sheet.

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PLEASE—BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things it doesn’t like—which is most things that are true.

We’ll say it loud and clear: At Mother Jones, no one gets to tell us what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please do your part and help us reach our $150,000 membership goal by May 31.

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