A Trillion-Dollar Gimmick

HBC Publication(House Budget Committee)

•  The Reid plan relies on the inaccurate assumption that surge-level spending in Iraq and Afghanistan is scheduled to continue over the next decade.
• assumes the continuation of surge-level spending in Iraq and Afghanistan, even though the President has neither requested this funding nor signaled that he might request it.
• Rather than defend this gimmick on the merits, supporters of the Reid plan are defending it by claiming that House Republicans “also included” this $1 trillion in savings... (not true)
• the House-passed budget cuts spending by $6.2 trillion relative to the President’s request.

This looks like the Democrats are not budging on spending, while claiming that the Republicans are not being reasonable.  Something smells.

It may well be a gimmick, but that is about what I've expected all along.

Update:

I clicked on another of the publications linked to in the above article.   A few snippets from that:

• Since last December, when the President’s Fiscal Commission proposed roughly $4 trillion in deficit reduction, the figure has become a kind of de facto standard for measuring subsequent budgets; 
• it is necessary to establish a common and impartial yardstick – a “baseline”
• A “baseline” is a projection of future spending, revenues, deficits, and debt. Claims of deficit reduction are measured against the underlying baseline chosen.

This is where the shell games get played.  Claims can be made of savings, but it all depends on what baseline is chosen.  If the baseline is unrealistic, then the claims are too.

I think you just need to look at the bottom line:  there are going to be trillion dollars deficits for as far as the eye can see unless something changes.  Most claims, therefore, are rhetoric.

Update:

I may as well continue with this line; here's a pdf file, which gives a full discussion of baselines

• Constructed this way, the BEA [Budget Enforcement Act]current law baseline can generate misleading projections – and this problem is especially pronounced today. For example, current policies, widely accepted, call for a reduction in spending over the next several years for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan; but because the baseline assumes the current level of war spending will continue and grow with inflation, it overstates future discretionary spending by sizeable amounts; and it is more than $1 trillion above the war spending request in the President’s fiscal year 2012 budget.
• The discrepancy is even greater with taxes. Under current law – and due to a procedure imposed by the Senate 4 – the marginal tax rates enacted in 2001 and 2003 are scheduled to expire after 2012, as are relief from the alternative minimum tax [AMT] and the current estate tax compromise.5 The expirations would cause tax rates to revert to their higher, pre-2001 levels, creating a $3.525-trillion tax increase over 10 years. Further, extending any of these existing tax policies beyond their scheduled expiration is treated as a new tax “cut” relative to the BEA baseline. Hardly anyone expects all these tax increases to occur; but, as noted, the BEA baseline assumes they will. Thus this tax baseline creates two significant sources of confusion
• To provide a true apples-to-apples comparison of the President’s original budget submission and the House Republican budget, it is necessary to establish a single, consistent baseline against which to measure both. That baseline should be policy-neutral; that is, it should incorporate a realistic and impartial assessment of what are genuinely existing, and expected, policies. This analysis employs a “current policy” baseline that seeks to meet these aims. 

The Current Policy Baseline, the House-Passed Budget,
and the President’s Budget

• Relative to a current policy baseline, the House-passed budget reduces spending by $5.5 trillion, revenues by $637 billion, and deficits by $4.8 trillion over the next 10 years. Debt held by the public under the House budget would be $5.1 trillion lower in fiscal year 2021. In contrast, the President’s budget, measured against this same current policy baseline, would increase outlays by $741 billion, raise taxes by $1.2 trillion, and reduce deficits by only $453 billion over the next 10 years. Debt held by the public would be only $389 billion lower in fiscal year 2021 under the President’s budget, compared to current policy.

The reduction in spending is the sticking point for Democrats. They'll never go for that while in power.