Math Is Hard: John Thune's Plan To Eliminate Deficits In 10 Many, Many Years

John Thune's plan to quadruple the deficit in one year.... more wars and more tax cuts for milionaires......

Classic gobbledygook meant for people who have absolutely no idea what's actually in the federal budget. So they're going to go after "wasteful spending". Great. Is there a budget category headed "wasteful spending"? And is this category larger than the entire budget deficit? Well, I guess it is if you include such "wasteful spending" as Social Security and Medicare. But of course they'd never say that. Instead they rail against stuff that actually comprises a trifling part of the federal budget and play to the popular misconceptions.

SSDD.

There is a great chart on FactCheck.org that every deficit hawk needs to look at and try to understand. It's a chart that shows our spending as a % of GDP.

http://factcheck.org/Images/image/2010/Wire%20Items/Spending_GDP(3).png

It shows a couple of facts that they are just blind to:

1. Our spending is only 1% higher than Reagan
2. It isn't that crazy and outrageous as compared to years past.
3. The best President in the last 20 years to reduce spending is Clinton
4. The increased spending started in 2008 before President Obama took office.

As much as his math sucks, you may want to check yours.

Let's suppose that his thing works and he reduces the deficit by 10% every year. Then, every year, the deficit will be 9/10ths of that of the previous year. To find what percentage of the deficit will remain after n years, we just multiply 9/10 to itself n times (so, raise it to the nth power). If we do this we find that after 10 years the deficit would be 34.9% of what we started out with (so, about 488 billion). After 20 years, the deficit would be 12.2% of what it started as (so, about 170 billion). Which isn't anything near a penny. A bit of experimentation shows that to reduce the deficit to under 0.01$, we would have to continue this process for 310 years (not accounting for future inflation or the break-up of the USA into multiple corporate quasi-states or whatever).

So, my point is that when you say "over 20 years", you are waaaaaay underestimating the time that would take.

I saw a website today that focused on selling training to "build generational wealth". They said if you make a 1% improvement in yourself every day, you'd be 100% improved in 100 days! I loled.

Has Beutler bought into the misleading "tax hike" terminology? Allowing a time-limited tax cut to expire is already in the law – the Bush Gang put it there to avoid the exploding deficit numbers that resulted from a permanent tax hike.

Me, I support the Bush tax cuts – including their Republican-enacted expiration.

Yebbut... this works out just fine in "the new math", Texas GOP schoolbook style.

The part about the percentages not adding up is a nitpick, and obscures the more important point: since Thune isn't saying what he would cut, he doesn't have a plan for shit. His plan is for someone else to have a plan.

Republican math is warm and fuzzy.

And by the way John, Bill Clinton did in 7 years and he didn't even cut taxes, in fact he raised them modestly on the richest.

Guess Democratic party math is more powerful than Grand Oligarchy party math.

I hate to be the skunk at the garden party here, but I actually watched the video, and Thune DID NOT say that the 10% "plan" would eliminate the deficit in 10 years. GRETA introduced that possibility with HER question about that and Thune said "theoretically" yes, but immediately pointed out that 10% was a floor and, of course, it would take Democrats and Republicans to be on board with reducing the deficit (Democrats would definitely oppose ANY reductions in spending and would be all for raising taxes, but there are enough Republicans who would buckle under the media propaganda of "mean spirited" and "heartless" Republicans who want to make "draconian cuts" to liberal pet programs (aren't they all, except of course for national defense). The TPM theme that Thune "falsely" represented that the deficit would be cut to zero in 10 years is further rendered "false" and merely a partisan hack job on Thune because Thune himself says near the end of the clip that 'we have over the course of 1 10 year period a plan that would save about $1 Trillion minimum."

So, yes, math is hard, but apparently honest reporting is even harder. Check for yourself, but only an intellectually dishonest reporter would not flunk TPM for its putting up a demonstrably FALSE title on the video that says "Thune and Fox: GOP Plan Would Eliminate Deficit In 10 Year..." Neither Thune nor Fox said that. Thune was realistic (as realistic as a politician can be) about the political realities of reducing the deficit, and he added "you have to start somewhere". Thune has set out a plan on "starting somewhere" on reducing the deficit and achieving deficit savings of $1 Trillion over the next ten years. That is what he said. No promises or predictions of cutting the deficit to zero were made. TPM gets an "F" for honest reporting (so what else is new about liberal media?) This is why readership and viewship of liberal media is declining and the readership, viewship, and listeners to conservative news and commentary is growing. Just a heads up to anyone who actually cares about honest reporting.

Our congress can't keep all the stuff straight they got already. Another committee is just what they need.

And then, of course, we have geniuses like Thune, having demonstrated his shortcomings with math, informing us why the nations finances are in the toilet.

Thune is another liar with (R) associated with his name. They live in the FAUX world where if you say something, the wingnuts and baggers believe it is true. They do not know math, much less understand math. They just say things to rile up the illiterates in their base.

A ReThuglican bad at math? You don't say!

They were hopin that he'd be the new great white hope of the GOBP well he got OWNED.

Second, isn't he supposed to be the cute one?

Third...Republicans and bad math go together like stink on poop

Instead of focusing on Thune's response to Van Susteren's stupid "in 10 years!?!?!" question, we should be looking at what it would mean for this country if all of the cuts Thune is proposing were taken out of non-security discretionary spending. [Republicans would never agree to cut security spending, would they?]

As a thought experiment, starting with FY2010 discretionary spending of $1.23 trillion, of which $695 billion is 'security' spending (see OMB, Fiscal Year 2010, Table S-4) and assuming:
1. security-related discretionary spending is held flat in nominal dollars;
2. non-discretionary spending is not touched (think 'third rail');
3. the deficit each year is reduced by 10% over the previous year:
... we see the following year-over-year cuts in non-security discretionary spending:

Year / Size of cut / Spending
Year 1 / 14.3% / 597 billion
Year 2 / 15.1% / 507
Year 3 / 16.0% / 426
Year 4 / 17.1% / 353
Year 5 / 18.6% / 287
Year 6 / 20.5% / 228
Year 7 / 23.3% / 175
Year 8 / 27.3% / 127
Year 9 / 33.8% / 84
Year 10 / 45.9% / 46
Year 11 / 76.3% / 11

In Year 12, with no more non-security discretionary spending left to cut, there would still be a deficit of $282.4 billion - 28% of today's deficit. [Of course, tax revenues would like increase each year so the deficit would decline a little faster, but let's ignore that for now - you get the idea.]

So where does Thune think the remaining cuts would come from? Security spending? I don't think so; it's not in their DNA. The only remaining places to cut would be non-security discretionary spending, i.e. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, etc. This is starve the beast in all its glory.

Putting it another way, if Thune and his ilk expect people to believe we can cut the deficit by 10% per year AND allow the Bush era tax cuts to expire AND not cut security spending, they're treating us like imbeciles OR they honestly expect us not to notice the country crumbling around us.

Or they really believe that it would all work out OK. In which case they might as well believe that dinosaurs and humans coexisted and hurricanes are God's way of punishing sexual behavior. Oh wait...

And this is the guy that DNC strategists think could give Obama his toughest reelection challenge. Ha. Good luck.

Thune may be struggling with the numbers, but he is not the big eared clown that put us in the position of having to deal with such a financial castrophe.

Plus, you wanna talk about struggling with numbers. Every time that Barack the Crock talks about the deficit he inherited, it is always north of $1 trillion when in fact is was $400 billion. And he's our Community Organizer in Chief!

And, I vwould make billions if I could come up with another company like Microsoft. We could save billions with my plan, if only it worked. What a moron,but then again, all the GOP impress me as moronic these days. Rah RahSarah Palin, and Michelle Bachman, and oh yeah, let's give a shout out to that paragon of integrity and maturity, Senator John Ensign.

Cut military spending. Tax the rich. Deficit gone.

More and more I find these stories annoying, because basically they are opposition research masking as news. The ONLY reason TPM did this story (I'll be $100) is because Thune is considered a possible 2012 presidential contender and someone in the DNC leadership recently said they thought he was scary. So TPM went after him and did indeed discover him saying something stupid (hardly surprising, and I have no love for Thune whatsoever, and I'd be thrilled if he was discredited as a serious politician).

What especially rankles me is that TPM is not up front about what they are doing--digging up dirt on a Republican who the Dems are worried about. At least say that Thune was recently discussed as a dangerous candidate for the Dems so readers know the context--to exclude that is disingenuous.

Meanwhile, there has been basically nothing here (I think two posts, one a link to a jokey "who cares?" Colbert segment) on the Wikileaks documents about Afghanistan. Why isn't TPM encouraging readers to dig through those documents and report some of the more interesting details back to the site? That would be a good use of resources, and frankly if Bush were still president I bet that would be happening right now.

This web site was far more useful when it was in the opposition. With Obama in power it's largely an extension of the Democratic party's media machine. It should be better than that.

Ha ha. Hahahahahahaha. Heh. Ha. Wow. Ha.

So... anywhoo...

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/s/t/star_mason/2010/07/which-president-signed-the-ext.php?ref=reccafe

Seems way more important.

When Republicans are in the minority, they sing the tune of small government, lower taxes, cut spending, and the deficit is killing us. Once they get into power, as evidenced during the recent Bush years, the tune becomes deficits don't matter, and yes sir Mr President, what ever spending you'd like. What they are really doing is misselling their dislike of spending on social programs, and the fact they they didn't have the say in what to spend on. Once in power, spending is not a problem, again, it's on what that they questions arise.

Dear Republicans,

Please, next time when you guys start to have some grand new idea, ask a college graduate to read it through, think it over. The glaring mistakes in your "new idea"s start to bother me not to take you guys seriously.

When you have accusations against the democrats, it is, most of the time, lies and hypocrisies. When you have "new idea"s, it is, most of the time, lies and hypocrisies (and #mathfails, apparently). When you open up your mouth, it is, most of the time, lies and hypocrisies. I think, the tea party element must have influenced your ranks. They all speak Stupid now.

An independent

Many, many years is an understatement. Using Thune's proposal, it would take more than 330 years to reduce the current debt of $12.7 trillion to below a penny.

I'm a big fan of this website, but to criticize Thune on math is a little ridiculous. To recap what he said:

"So in 10 years we wouldn't have a deficit?" van Sustern asked.

"Theoretically, yes," Thune replied. "10% Is a floor. Obviously -- you can go beyond that."

I mean, he is correct right? *Theoretically* we can eliminate the deficit in 10 years, assuming that the percent reduction each year increases gradually toward 100%.

My point is that he isn't lying or making a math error at all -- he does say that 10% is a *floor* after all. Where we should fault him, I think, is simply for being sort of a sophist, offering a plan that superficially may appear helpful (10%/year = 10 year deficit elimination), but really is not.

Based on the transcript we can say that he is disingenuous and insulting of the intellect of viewers, but we cannot say that he has committed a math flub -- technically he hasn't!

Come on TPM, you can do better than this.

I realize it's easy to pick on Thune's poor response to the question posed, but doesn't Greta Van Susteren and her production team have some responsibility to do their math homework ahead of time? Does anyone do any prep these days or is it all about advancing the theme no matter how wrong? That last question is rhetorical.

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