Whelp, Congress’ official budget scorekeeper has weighed in on House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) debt limit plan and if you’re a Republican, it’s a very mixed review.
The goodish news for conservatives is that relative to projections based on current spending, the Congressional Budget Office estimates Boehner’s plan would reduce non-war discretionary spending by $710 billion over 10 years. That’s if his discretionary spending caps were to hold in the out years, and future Congresses didn’t change the law to allow themselves to appropriate more money. Over the course of a decade, CBO estimates the plan would reduce deficits by $851 billion. Those are big numbers. But they’re less than Boehner’s $1 trillion in promised cuts, and would thus make it hard for him to stand by his demand for a dollar-for-dollar match between deficit reduction and new borrowing authority. That’s a look at the full budget window.
What would it do right away? Not much at all.
Exempting war spending — which goes untouched in Boehner’s plan — the legislation would reduce spending by only $5 billion next fiscal year. And its impact on the deficit is even less — a paltry $1 billion.
This is a big part of the reason House Republican leaders are having such a hard time securing enough votes for this thing.
Brian Beutler
Brian Beutler is TPM's senior congressional reporter. Since 2009, he's led coverage of health care reform, Wall Street reform, taxes, the GOP budget, the government shutdown fight, and the debt limit fight. He can be reached at brian@talkingpointsmemo.com.
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