Wouldn't it be such a huge tragedy if Americans had rejected Democrats this month out of sheer ignorance of the actual legislation Democrats passed in two years? Har, har. You can cry now.
If you're actually concerned about the government's fiscal health, US Government Accountability Office released an interesting report yesterday:
The federal government faces long-term fiscal pressures that predate the economic downturn and are driven on the spending side largely by rising health care costs and an aging population. GAO's simulations show continually increasing levels of debt that are unsustainable over the long-term. Under the Alternative simulation, debt held by the public as a share of GDP would exceed the historical high reached in the aftermath of World War II by 2020. Both of these simulations incorporate effects of health care legislation enacted in March 2010, which includes a number of provisions to control the growth of federal health care spending. There is a notable improvement in the long-term outlook under the Baseline Extended simulation, which assumes full implementation and effectiveness of cost control provisions.
This report is non-partisan and respected. At the Huffington Post there's a nice caveat about how conservative GAO was in its estimation:
It's also worth noting that the GAO was fairly judicious with how they calculated its projections. It was assumed, for instance, that Congress would pass some form of a "doc-fix" in which Medicare physician payment rates were adjusted to "grow with inflation." The GAO also took into account the federal spending for the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and subsidies for the newly created health insurance exchanges.
Again, the meme should be, "Democrats lower long-term debt" sung from every rooftop. Otherwise this will be another swiftboating, climategate, whitey incident, baseless utterly and permitted for Republican credibility.
The Republicans command barely any issues that polling's left on their side--not the specter of gayz roonin' ma mayrage, not the economy, not health care. Knock them off their flimsy footing on fiscal issues and the jig is all but up.
You know what would be a great way of wedging Republicans--leaving the Tea Party, Ron Paul, Moonbat Bachmann, and all the other little creatures sparring? Cut 15% of the military budget by reviewing earmarks, overhead, no-bid contracts, et al. You could "plug" the awful state of public lands bureaus, employ enough scientists in them again, and help hire/save more teachers and still be shrinking the size of government. And the economy would be stimulated without doing anything more than actually educating children and making use of our national resources. Or reducing military spending to 1999 levels would do the trick, as JesseCW suggested to Rep. Brad Miller this morning.
Republicans are left stammering when you actually suggest cutting one of their beloved porkers.