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Sunday, June 13, 2010 1:14 PM


Sunday Funnies 2010-06-13 Obama's Deficit Reduction Commission Runs Out of Money, Seeks Budget Increase


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Deficit Reduction Commission Seeks Budget

Hot Air is poking fun at Obama's Deficit Commission.

Please consider Deficit Reduction Commission Out Of Money
Today’s Someone Left the Irony On Award goes to the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, better known as the Deficit Commission. Barack Obama created the panel ostensibly to reach some kind of bipartisan consensus on reducing the federal deficit; a better title may have been the Accountability Avoidance Commission, since it owes its existence to the need for Obama to avoid political blame for the massive tax hikes he needs to fund his nanny-state agenda. Even before they get to that stage, however, they have already proven that government naturally inclines towards unthinking growth and irresponsibility, as the Tax Prof discovered at Tax Analysts: Deficit Reduction Commission Seeks Increase in its Budget....

Congress has allocated $500,000 in operating costs apart from the four full-time employees for the life of the panel, which produces its report on December 1. That is about $50,000 per month to analyze the federal budget and develop proposals for cuts, based on having an unpaid commission full of supposed experts in this field.

This is a microcosm of the very problem that the commission is supposed to fix, and the reaction from Washington pols is priceless for understanding it. The gripe from Harry Reid is that the staffing doesn’t match that of Congressional panels, such as the House Ways and Means Committee. That panel employs 90 staffers and spent over $8 million in FY2009. Ninety staffers equals more than 20% of the entire Congress. Maybe the problem isn’t that the NCFRR doesn’t have enough people, but that Ways and Means spends way beyond our means. In fact, the entire federal government spends way beyond our means, and we can thank the Democrats who added over a trillion dollars in annual federal spending in just three short years for that, increasing the budget by 40% during their control of Congress.

Meanwhile, let’s just savor the irony of a deficit commission that couldn’t get halfway to its goal without running its own deficits.
Thanks to HotAir and Taxprof for this report.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
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