Dan Weil:
The automatic government spending cuts that drew howls of protest from Washington when they began March 1 have turned out splendidly, says Stephen Moore, a Wall Street Journal editorial board member.
“The biggest underreported story out of Washington this year is that the federal budget is shrinking and much more than anyone in either party expected,” he wrote Sunday.
Annual spending peaked at about $3.6 trillion in fiscal 2011. Many experts had expected outlays would reach $4 trillion by 2014, Moore reported.
Instead, spending dropped to $3.54 trillion in fiscal 2012, and is on track to dip below $3.45 trillion by Sept. 30, the end of fiscal 2013. That would represent the first time government spending has decreased for two straight years since the end of the Korean War, Moore noted.
“This reversal from the spending binge in 2009 and 2010 began with the debt-ceiling agreement between Mr. Obama and House Speaker John Boehner in 2011,” Moore said.
That accord included $2 trillion in spending caps for 10 years and spawned the sequester, which will save more than $50 billion this fiscal year.
“As long as Republicans don’t foolishly undo this amazing progress by agreeing to Mr. Obama’s demands for a ‘balanced approach’ to the 2014 budget in exchange for calling off the sequester, additional expenditure cuts will continue automatically,” he added.
“In other words, Mr. Obama has inadvertently chained himself to fiscal restraints that could flatten federal spending for the rest of his presidency.”
Moore said a return to normal economic growth could send the budget deficit lower at least through 2015.
When will BHO take credit?
As I recall he wanted sequester and got it. Then he railed against it and how the GOP, with sequester, would destroy the government. But now that it shows signs of working, I am sure he will jump back to the side that wanted it. “Blowin in the Wind” is the BHO song.
When we were nearing sequestration Obama started a campaign to scare everyone about the devastating impact the automatic cuts would have on every gov’t agency.
But none of that happened.
Almost all of the threatened ”fuloughs” were avoided by most dept’s simply by making cuts and ”finding” money in the budget that used to be wasted.
Even in the military, where most of the cuts happened, the plan was for 750,000 employees losing 22 days of work….but the reality has been only 650,000 employees losing 6 days of work!
HUD managed to cut its planned days off completely.
Treasury cut them down to three.
HHS has not required any days off for its workers.
Seems the only notable thing this sequester did was allow the Obama’s to close the doors to the People’s House.
Shows there was plenty of waste, plenty of fat and we cut a bit of it.
Whoopie!
We’re still deep in debt.
I seem to recall that a decline in deficits as the economy recovered were part of the Obama administration’s own projections. Those projections, of course, were repeatedly discounted.
Inadvertently is an interesting take on things. Please remind me: Who’s plan was the sequester to begin with? And who has been set up to look like Ebenezer Scrooge as spending reductions are accomplished?
Obama will continue to publicly demand a balanced approach, knowing perfectly well how republicans will continue to publicly respond.
When the sequester was planned, it was only supposed to keep us under the debt limit until EARLY 2013.
But fiscal shenanagans have kept us $25 million under the debt limit for MONTHS!
Our gov’t has not spent one dime more than it has taken in (or created electronically at Treasury) for well over 3 months!
The entire sequester ”saved” us about $100 billion/year in ADDED spending….over $55 billion of that from the military.
In percents that comes to about 3% of our spending.
Out of $3.8 TRILLION we expect to spend this year.
Remember, the sequester only saves us from ADDING more money to already bloated federal departments.
It doesn’t CUT a penny.
@Greg:
You conveniently forget that Obama began an intensive fear-campaign against sequester once it became inevitable AND took every effort to make it painful on the people (while he, of course, suffered no ill-effects).
Improvements in the economy? Such as?
Going Kerry one better, Obama was for the sequester before he was against it well before he was, again, proven a huge liar, at which point he supported it again. Every bit of the savings is due to the dire risks (and electoral punishment) the Republicans took to demand spending cuts. It only demonstrates that, with the proper will (always lacking among liberals) we CAN address and resolve our enormous debt problem. Obama’s approach is balanced only in an unbalanced mind.
@Greg: Yes, when the economy recovers, than deficits should be reduced. The secret word here Greg is “when”. It hasn’t not happened yet!