"I'm going to cut the subsidy to PBS. I like PBS. I love Big Bird. Actually, I like you too [Jim]. But I’m not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for.”
Today, the President's campaign is out with a new ad featuring Big Bird admonishing Mitt Romney for promising to crack down on Sesame Street instead of the bankers on Wall Street and is getting some backlash describing the Obama campaign as unserious with their defense.
Here's why the Big Bird argument matters. In a nutshell, this example shows that Republicans (in power at least) don't give two shits about the deficit or debt and the only reason they care about it now is because they can use it to cut down on liberal programs that they hate regardless of the economic climate; things like PBS, food stamps and foreign aid. These programs account for less than one percent of the budget, but these are the programs that are first on the list to go in a Republican controlled White House or chamber of Congress.
For all their talk of honesty, Republicans are looking ripe to continue their spend and cut ways. For all of Paul Ryan's promise, there has been minimal mention of his plan to voucherize Medicare, and while I disagree with this policy it definitely saves the government money and is honest about what the #1 driver of the deficit is. And as Mitt Romney's tax plan currently illustrates, independent studies have shown that to give all tax payers an across-the-board 20% rate cut, plus a 10% reduction in the corporate tax rate, PLUS $2 trillion extra dollars in military spending, that deep hole cannot be bridged by "closing loopholes" yet to be named.
In all honesty, in the immediate term, I think the unemployment rate is way more important to fix than the deficit but we definitely need a long-term solution and cutting PBS and foreign aid gets us nowhere close. But don't let Republicans tell you they care about deficits and debt, because they don't.
