Which Spending Is Easier To Cut And By What Level Of Government?

Back from his break, our former co-blogger, Dean Baker at Beat the Press, takes down WaPo ed page editor, Fred Hiatt, for his pushing yet again for cutting Social Security because it is supposedly "easy to do" in contrast to medical spending, with Hiatt pinning the blame on Dems for not supporting cutting either.  Baker notes that putting med costs in line with those in other countries would alone completely eliminate the federal budget deficit, and that Dems are not the ones opposing cuts to drug companies or "overpaid medical specialists." http://www.cepr.net/index.php/beat-the-press/why-does-Fred-Hiatt-say-the-democrats-are-opposed-to-giving-less-money-to-drug-companies-and-overpaid-medical-specialists? .  Hiatt barely nods at GOP opposition to tax increases and the possibility of cutting defense spending, even though the US is winding down some of its current active wars.

Dean kindly avoids noting that Hiatt is part of a group of established media mavens in Washington who long ago convinced themselves that somehow not only is Social Security "in crisis," but that somehow it is the easiest program to cut (future) spending on politically, although that will do nearly nothing to limit near-term deficits and that there is nearly zero support among the public of both parties for such an action, and that efforts by various politicians of both parties in recent years to do this have ended up as embarrassing failures.  But this gang does not give up easily, including Hiatt, back at it yet again.

Unfortunately, the alternative appears to be a trick buried in Paul Ryan's budget proposal: send certain social safety net programs down to the states, with the leading candidate being Medicaid, which is already partly funded by the states.  As much as any program, this is one that should be solely funded by the feds as that would help even the playing field across states, given that the states that need it the most are the states with the most poor people and thus least able to support their poor people.  But no, Ryan thinks that Medicaid should be sent fully to the states, and some movement in this direction has already happened.

This hypocritical trend of Grover Norquist "no higher taxes" politicians sending important programs to lower levels of government so they can claim "savings" without tax increases is going on more widely, also reflecting Norquist's influence at even state levels.  So, in Virginia where I live, this most recent legislature, newly run fully by the GOP with our GOP governor, has in an effort to balance the state budget without raising taxes or appearing to cut programs, sent an unfunded mandate to the local governments, removing the funding but requiring that they contribute more to teacher pension funds.

This has led to a fairly astounding result, although the mayor or Harrisonburg, where I live, tells me that a lot of these legislators somehow convinced themselves it would not happen.  Nearly every local government in the state, including the vast majority of ones run by Republicans, has raised local taxes, mostly property taxes, but also others as well.  They have been cutting and cutting their budgets for the last several years, something manifesting itself nationally in the steady stream of layoffs at both state and local government levels.  The expectations by citizens for continuing to have basic local public services of some sort simply overrode this idiocy of no new taxes in the face of this unfunded mandate from the state, which in turn at least partly reflects the ongoing rise of Medicaid costs, exacerbated by the feds pushing even more of those down to the states.

As it is, here in Harrisonburg, property taxes are going up, along with a small increase in the rate on restaurant meals.  The alternative to the meals tax rise (much opposed by local restauranteurs) was to raise personal property taxes.  Around the state, different combinations of such increases have been implemented, and it will be interesting to see whether local voters punish their leaders for doing this or will figure it out that they have been pushed to this by the irresponsibility of state politicians.  This problem may well be worse for local Republican leaders than for Dems, given that in general the latter have not hobbled themselves so tightly with all these inane pledges about taxes, although so far, Grover Norquist has not gotten down to the local level guys with making them sign pledges and holding them publicly to them.  There are just too many of them for him to keep track of all of them.