The baseline budgeting con

There's NEVER any cuts...and here's how Washington continues to fool us every time: it's called baseline budgeting.

WSJ:Both the White House and House Republicans are pretending that their goal is "reducing the deficit," which they suggest means making real spending choices. They are talking about a "$4 trillion plan," or something, regardless of how that number is reached.

Here's the reality: Those numbers have no real meaning because they are conjured in the wilderness of mirrors that is the federal budget process. Since 1974, Capitol Hill's "baseline" has automatically increased spending every year according to Congressional Budget Office projections, which means before anyone has submitted a budget or cast a single vote. Tax and spending changes are then measured off that inflated baseline, not in absolute terms.

In Washington, Democrats designed this system to make it easier to defend annual spending increases and to portray any reduction in the baseline as a spending "cut." Chris Wallace called Timothy Geithner on this "gimmick" on "Fox News Sunday" this week, only to have the Treasury Secretary insist it's real.

Republicans used to object to this game, but in recent years they seem to have given up. In an October 2010 speech at the American Enterprise Institute, House Speaker Boehner proposed that "we ought to start at square one" and rewrite the 1974 budget act. But he then dropped the idea, and in the current debate the GOP is putting itself at a major disadvantage by negotiating off the phony baseline. In a press release Tuesday, his own office advertised the need for "spending cuts" that aren't even cuts.

If Republicans really want to slow the growth in spending, they need to stop playing by Beltway rules and start explaining to America why Mr. Obama keeps saying he's cutting spending even as spending and deficits keep going up and up and up.

Right on...and the same can be applied to O'Boehner's latest parroting.

Michael Tanner explains in an NRO piece how the Republican and Democratic proposals for the fiscal cliff barely differ with baseline budgeting factored in. They're two of a kind, and hardly worth surrendering on tax revenues for such similarly mild reductions.

President Obama’s proposed fiscal-cliff deal, which would increase spending to $5.5 trillion in 2022, the same as the current baseline. ...if the president gets every bit of the $1.6 trillion in new taxes he has asked for, we would still add $6 trillion to the national debt over the next ten years, and run a $661 billion deficit in 2022.

Republicans have countered with an offer that is better — but not by much. Their plan would increase taxes by $800 billion over ten years... Republicans suggest spending $1.4 trillion less than the current baseline over ten years. Federal spending would thus total $5.27 trillion in 2022, about $900 billion more than if it had simply grown at the rate of inflation plus population. This would add an additional $5.14 trillion in debt by 2022, and the deficit in that year would be $540 billion.

To repeat what you should already know by now: We don't have a taxing problem; we have a spending problem...and worse, we have a budgeting problem before we even get to taxes or spending. I also believe I've said this before (but I'll say it again): The only thing being 'negotiated' is our demise.