[lbo-talk] the retrenchment begins

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Tue Jan 26 08:31:37 PST 2010


On Jan 26, 2010, at 10:54 AM, farmelantj at juno.com wrote:


> Isn't that what bipartisanship has always meant in
> the USA?

I think this is actually worse than Clinton. Under Clinton, military spending fell from 4.4% of GDP to 3.0%. The scumbags at Obama's OMB no longer distinguish between domestic and foreign discretionary spending in their budget tables, but total discretionary spending as percent of GDP rose by 0.2 points. Today's NYT piece on this abomination says that domestic discretionary spending as a share of GDP will reach its lowest level "in a half century." The budget tables only start in 1962, when nondefense discretionary was 3.4% of GDP; it's 4.8% this year. Last year, they were already projecting getting back to 3.4% of GDP in 2014 - they're now probably looking to get closer to 3.0%, which would be an enormous fiscal tightening.

These idiots said they didn't want to repeat the mistake of 1937, but it looks like that's exactly what they're doing.

Doug



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