How to Save $3 Trillion Painlessly

Elana Schor at TPMDC has a great piece on the potentially huge budget savings from reversing just two of the most egregious Smirky/Darth spending sprees.

At the request of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently examined the impact of three alternative "policy scenarios" on our current budget deficit, expected to hit $1.5 trillion for 2009. Their conclusions were fascinating -- or troubling, depending on your degree of fiscal hawkishness.

SNIP

All these numbers can be a bit confusing, but here's the rub: a sensible policy of drawdown in Iraq and reverting to Clinton-era tax cuts to the wealthy saves $2.8 trillion over the next 10 years.

Focusing on the reversal of the Bush tax cuts alone, the CBO found a $124 billion price tag to keep them alive for all earners into 2011 but only a $65 billion cost if the tax cuts were reserved only for middle- and lower-income Americans.

So when Republicans talk about the "impact of the deficit on future generations," just remind them that $59 billion of that problem can be solved by making life a little harder for high earners.

Sound too good to be true? It's hard to remember now, but Bill Clinton left a $2 trillion surplus when he left office in 2001. Smirky's 2001 giveaway to the rich sucked up half of that, and the first year of the Iraq clusterfuck took the rest. It's been monster deficits ever since.

So get the fuck out of Iraq and stop subsidizing obscenely wealthy parasites, and suddenly we're back on rational budget ground.

Amazing how much you can accomplish just by applying a little common sense to a problem.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....