From the Fact Check: Sen. Harry Reid was doubly wrong when he claimed that Congress already has cut $2.6 trillion from projected future deficits by reducing “non-defense programs” alone.
In fact, legislation he refers to applied to both security and non-security spending. Furthermore, a good chunk of the deficit reduction came from tax increases, not spending cuts.
Reid made the claim — twice — on ABC’s “This Week” on Feb. 3, in support of his argument that further deficit reduction should include more tax increases and cuts in military spending.
Reid: The American people need to understand that it’s not as if we’ve done nothing for the debt. $2.6 trillion, $2.6 trillion already we’ve made in cuts. And all those cuts have come from non-defense programs.Reid’s $2.6 trillion figure (which covers a 10-year period) has been puffed up a bit since he said on the Senate floor — only three days earlier — “We have already made nearly $2.5 trillion in historic, bipartisan deficit reduction.” Since then, he has added over $100 billion to the 10-year total and started claiming that it’s all from non-defense spending, which is not the case.
Democratic claims of $2.5 trillion in deficit reduction refer not just to spending cuts. For example, President Obama said at a news conference on Jan. 14 that he had signed “a total of about $2.5 trillion in deficit reduction over the past two years.” But Obama included in that figure only $1.4 trillion in actual “spending cuts.”
Obama’s figure also included more than $600 billion in tax increases on upper-income individuals, which he signed Jan. 3. And it included about $500 billion in reduced interest payments, resulting from reduced future borrowing. A spokesman for Reid, whom we contacted by email, also conceded that Reid’s higher figure includes what he called “tax savings,” by which of course he means higher taxes. http://factcheck.org/2013/02/reid-twice-wrong-on-2-6-trillion-cuts/
I wonder if any state in the United States would like to trade someone for Coward/Liar Harry Reid? Maybe Scott Walker of Wisconsin for Reid? Nah, they'll never go for that.
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