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MaddowBlog

From The Rachel Maddow Show

Budget officials tell Republicans what they don’t want to hear

As House Republican leaders pursue a wildly unrealistic budget plan, the Congressional Budget Office has produced some inconvenient truths for the GOP.

By Steve Benen

House Republican leaders do not yet have a budget plan of their own, but in broad strokes, they have a relatively specific goal in mind: The new House GOP majority wants to balance the budget in 10 years while protecting Trump-era tax breaks, and without touching Medicare and Social Security. Much of the party also insists on shielding funding for the Pentagon and veterans.

A Washington Post report last week noted that Dan Meyer, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s chief of staff, has privately expressed concern that meeting such a goal “will prove difficult, if not impossible.” The article added that Meyer recently marveled at “the seeming absurdity” of the circumstances.

This might’ve been understating the case. Politico reported:

Senate Democrats are touting a new analysis from federal budget experts that illustrates what they say is the mathematical impossibility of GOP plans to balance the federal budget over 10 years, while extending Trump-era tax cuts and leaving Social Security, Medicare, defense and veterans benefits intact.

According to a Congressional Budget Office analysis released yesterday, if Republicans want to balance the budget within 10 years, without touching entitlements, military spending, or veterans care, they’d have to cut 86% of federal spending on everything else.

And by “everything else,” I’m being quite literal. To make the budget arithmetic work, Congress would have to cut 86% of federal spending on border security. And agriculture. And air-traffic control. And law enforcement. And environmental protections. And a few thousand other priorities that benefit Americans every day.

What’s more, that 86% figure is based on the assumption that Trump-era tax cuts would be allowed to lapse altogether. If Republicans intend to keep the ineffective Trump-era tax breaks in place — and we already know they do — then the budget math collapses altogether: Congress could cut 100% of “everything else,” and by the CBO’s estimates, the budget still wouldn’t balance in 10 years.

Politico’s report added that two Democratic senators — Rhode Island’s Sheldon Whitehouse, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, and Oregon’s Ron Wyden, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee — requested the CBO report and eagerly touted the findings.

“As this analysis shows, no amount of cuts can make their math add up,” Whitehouse said in a statement. “It is a farce.” Wyden added, “These numbers show that Speaker McCarthy made impossible promises to land his job, and that’s seriously alarming with a catastrophic default getting closer every day.”

This appears to leave the House Republican leadership with a small handful of choices.

  1. They can give up on their unrealistic goal.
  2. They can keep their goal, but propose cuts to social insurance programs and the military.
  3. They can keep their goal, but agree to roll back ineffective Trump-era tax cuts.

I can’t wait to see which of these options GOP leaders choose.

Steve Benen

Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MSNBC political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "The Impostors: How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics."