From the House Appropriations Committee (Republican), courtesy of TPM:
First, relating to this post on the early plans for cuts take a look at the hit to NOAA. (First column is relative to FY2010 budget enacted, and second column relative to FY2011 request.)
Page 2 from House Appropriations Committee via TPM.
Given the small likelihood of tsunamis and the fact that we don’t need to worry about global warming [0] [1], this makes a lot of sense. (By the way, record highs of 80 degrees in Madison on Sunday!).
On a different note, I find it incredibly interesting to see where other large cuts are placed.
Page 2 from House Appropriations Committee via TPM.
WIC stands for “Women, infants and children”, and is described here:
WIC provides Federal grants to States for supplemental foods, health care referrals, and nutrition education for low-income pregnant, breastfeeding, and non-breastfeeding postpartum women, and to infants and children up to age five who are found to be at nutritional risk.
Page 6 is also illuminating.
I understand the need for fiscal retrenchment, sometime in the future, in the big ticket items. But one needs to ask oneself if this is where the cuts should come.
Update, 12:20pm Pacific: Reuters elaborates.
Sure would have been nice for the Democrats to have come up with an alternative instead of just carping.
Really? $3.5 trillion in spending and you can’t come up with $30 billion you want to cut anywhere?
With food commodity prices at record highs, we should zero out all farm subsidies, thats right zero them out, eliminate them, rather than cut food stamps or WIC. The Pentagon has all sort of room for budget cuts.
Menzie keeps repeating his AGW references without showing any reason warming is bad. Wonder why so many snowbirds are from WI, MI, etc. Probably cause that ole W part of GW is so dangerous.
Climategate was a tipping point.
OK, let’s give it a go.
Varones, you have done what is called “begging the question”. That is, you have inserted a presumption of the truth of your own views into the request for an answer. So, let me clear this up for you, first as a matter of economics, then as a matter of politics.
As a matter of economics, this is the wrong time to be cutting the deficit, so your presumption that Democrats should come up with their own cuts simply misunderstand the economics of the situation. We should be finding more useful ways to run a deficit than a tax break for the wealthiest among us, but we should certainly continue to run a large deficit.
Now, as a matter of politics, the Democrats, in the person of the President, has submitted a budget proposal. The lying sacks on the “other side of the aisle” have been using this “where’s your proposal” line despite the fact that Obama’s proposal is already on the table, but that’s just evidence they are lying sacks. Either you are one of them, or have been tricked by them.
Now, as an answer to the isolated, nothing to do with appropriate fiscal balance ’cause we really need a deficit right now, question of where to cut $30 bln, that’s easy. High-end mortgage interest deductions, oil and gas subsidies, corporate farm subsidies, and whatever we need to make up the rest from the Pentagon. As a rule of thumb, we ought to treat the Pentagon the way the GOP treats the poor and helpless – as the place we routinely turn to make up any budget short-falls.
I hate to even bother with CoRev, but tossing “climategate” into any discussion of climate change is such a dishonest trick that it needs to be pointed out. Now, beyond that, what I don’t understand is why CoRev would present a village idiot argument about the effects of climate change. All there is to climate is where people go when they get old? That’s your argument? I thought I remembered you trying a lot harder to cover up the nuttiness of your ideas.
Yep, climate gate was a tipping point; it tipped the willfully ignorant into irrationality, where they joined the flat earthers and the birthers and helio-centric-ers.
This headline/story/tactics can only make future negotiations more difficult Budget tricks helped Obama save programs from cuts http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110412/ap_on_bi_ge/us_spending_showdown_details
@kharris: actually global austerity might take some pressure off rising food and energy prices.
@Menzie: Man-Made Global Warming? You really want to open that can of warms? The evidence continues to mount showing man-made increase in CO2 is not responsible for the majority of the trend warming since the Little Ice Age. But that is another topic.
I don’t know if any of the cuts you mention make sense because I don’t know the level of redundancy from related programs. When I was in high school I worked in a grocery store in a small town. A town small enough that everybody knows everybody, so I knew all the families who used the WIC vouchers. They made more money than many families who didn’t use them. More people were willing to take the free cheese and butter the government used to hand out to help the dairy farmers.
As climategate was released, the issue was already dropping. Harris says in Dec 2009:
“Big Drop in Those Who Believe That Global Warming Is Coming
Those who believe it is a serious problem have also declined
NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–As President Obama prepares to head to Copenhagen next week, a new Harris Poll finds that those who believe that the release of carbon dioxide and other gases will lead to global warming has dropped from 71% two years ago to only 51% now. While many people are not sure, those who do not believe that carbon dioxide emissions will cause global warming have increased from 23% to 29% since 2007.”
Today we have an article on how NOAA had its climate service zeroed/axed. EPA CO2 regulatory authority just barely made it through the past CR negotiations.
Climategate cost the climate warming contingent huge amounts of credibility.
CoRev Wonder why so many snowbirds are from WI, MI, etc.
I think it will soon be the other way around, with retirees from Florida and Arizona flocking to the upper midwest. Arizona will be bone dry and Florida will be under water.
Menzie Surely you cannot be surprised that the GOP would want to cut research monies for climate catastrophies that won’t affect the GOP’s primary constituency. The GOP is now disproportionately made up of geezer teabaggers and their personal intertemporal discount rates are not exactly consistent with climate outcomes 50 years in the future.
CoRev Observation #1: Voters went GOP in 2010. Observation #2: Voters know less science than they did a few years ago.
Coincidence?
tj Man-Made Global Warming? You really want to open that can of warms?
Can of “warms”? Nice pun. And how’s that urban heat island and corrupt weather station thing working out for you?
http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2011/04/01/01climatewire-experts-heat-up-over-berkeley-lab-scientists-q-490.html
kharris: As a matter of economics, this is the wrong time to be cutting the deficit
And what you have done is create a false dilemma. If now is not not the time to cut funding to WIC, can we put you down as in favor of WIC cuts when the economy is safely in expansion?
2slugs, the issue with the Berkley temp recalculation is that it was supposed to be open and transparent. What Muller did was testify as if the work was finished, when they had used just a 2% random sampling of the data, and without using the complete set of tested adjustment routines.
So using a small sample of the data, incomplete and untested processes, and without the open transparent communication promised, with testimony that left the impression otherwise, left a bad taste with those who trusted them with their research and data. Just another day in Climate Science.
It is funny how Democrats who crow about Clinton’s low spending levels are entirely incapable of cutting the government back to those very levels (as a % of GDP).
Come on, do it. I would be thrilled if you peeled back all of Bush’s increases (as that could only follow a repeal of the much larger Obama increase).
Cut spending back to 1999-2000 levels. We’ll address revenue and tax rates after that.
The real issue with Muller is that he said something that climate skeptics didn’t like. If he would have said something they agreed with, they wouldn’t give a care in the world about his methods. Just another day in Flat Earth Land.
Given the small likelihood of tsunamis and the fact that we don’t need to worry about global warming [0] [1], this makes a lot of sense. (By the way, record highs of 80 degrees in Madison on Sunday!).
There you have it; eighty degrees in Madison on 04/10/11. Clear cut proof of global warming.
CoRev Yes, I know. I heard his interview on NPR the other day. But a 2 percent random sample is still a pretty strong statement. We make life-or-death decisions using a lot smaller sample sizes than 2 percent of the population. What’s revealing is that Anthony Watts didn’t have a problem with Muller testifying before Congress knowing full well that the Livermore test results were not 100 percent complete. That was okay with Watts the day before the testimony because Watts thought Muller was going to testify the other way. It was only after Muller didn’t say what Watts wanted to hear that this 2 percent sampling thing became an issue. But you know in your heart of hearts that even if Muller had used 100 percent of the population, Watts still would have found some excuse to avoid having to concede the issue. We heard Watts’ brave talk about accepting the results no matter what only as long as he felt confident of the answer.
Jeff,
If baiting is all you have, you don’t have much. I’m not sure how you can read what I wrote, which makes no mention of WIC, as a specific endorsement of cutting or not cutting the program now or in the future, so you’re really just baiting.
Now, I’d be happy to have you demonstrate how I have created a false dichotomy, if you can manage it without salting you demonstration with a bunch of made-up stuff. Have at it.
I’m not sure how you
So, we have the GOP cutting support for science in a specific budget item, and CoRev tells us he has identified a specific cause, even though the GOP routinely tries to cut support for basic science, and there is no evidence that this case of cutting grows out of the specific cause that CoRev cites. A bit of the old “post hoc ergo I’ll say whatever I want” form of non-logic. No, what we have is CoRev picking up one of his favorite themes and claiming it matters, in a way that strains credulity – not that this is new behavior.
I am taking the high road on the man-made global warming hypothesis, and will wait for a separate thread rather than hijack this one.
Regarding the cuts: Some were part of the across the board .02% cuts on nondefense discrtionary, which both sides agreed to. Some were intended to rolling back a fraction of the uber large increases in spending from the last few years.
The bottom line is that both sides agreed to the cuts. Those that favor more spending should be happy that nearly all cuts are to items that are automatically restored each year, or were items that were of the ‘use it or lose it’ type.
This entire debate over ~1% of federal spending was nothing but political theatre.
TJ:
Great use of verifiable statistics to support your argument! Cutting programs like WIC and at the same time giving more money to the Pentagon is a prime example of an immoral trade off unless you turn morality on its head
Menzie: By the way, there is some doubt on how real these cuts were …
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/04/ahem-2.html
2slugs said: “We heard Watts’ brave talk about accepting the results no matter what only as long as he felt confident of the answer.” And it is the lost confidence that is the issue. Otherwise the 2% if adequately caveated, the statement of rising temp matching, if adequately caveated, and his implied assertions if adequately caveated probably would not have raised anyone’s ire.
Your assertion that his testimony included UHI and siting issues is just false. It did not, and that’s where the lost confidence counts.
Not transparent as promised, testimony based upon incomplete and untested data adjustments and unsupported conclusive statements makes for just another day in Climate Science.
Watts has a paper undergoing final stage peer review. Waiting to see what he says on siting/quality data impact issues could be important.
robert: I can’t say that WIC should or should not have been cut because I don’t know how much waste there is in the adminstration of the program, I don’t know how much redundancy there is with similar programs, I don’t know how much the WIC budget increased over the last few years. To take a position either way is simply letting emotions get the best of your.
Regardinig defense spending – yes, I agree. Cut it. We need to rethink our global strategy and re-priortize our spending.
kharris : You stated very plainly that as a “matter of economics” this is the wrong time to be cutting the deficit. The false dilemma you have proposed is that we can (a) either cut programs and risk hurting the economy, or (b) not cut the program and help the economy. The conclusion you are looking to invoke is clearly don’t cut the programs and help the economy. This is a false dilemma because it presupposes that (a) and (b) are the only options.
@Heterosexual: I bet your “pretend it’s the numerator that’s changed when it’s the denominator that’s crashed” trick is a HUGE hit at parties.
BTW, does that mean you support a return to Clinton-era tax brackets? Don’t let your teabagger buddies find out, or they’ll stop inviting you to the weekly cross-burning…
This chart is very unhelpful. Without knowing past budget allowances, nor how the 2011 requests compare to previous years the delta is essentially meaningless.
Have you ever done yearly budgeting in your office? When asking for funding for next year, you’ll ask for more than you need, knowing you’ll get less than you ask. The balancing act is to not ask for so much that you look stupid, but enough so when your budget gets slashed you can still operate. It’s a silly game but how the world works.
This chart would be drastically improved with just a few key pieces of information:
1) Total $ Requested, 2011
2) Total $ Requested, 2006
3) Total $ Requested 2001
4) Total % Recommended, vs 2011 Requested (this is the 2nd column)
5) Total % Recommended, vs 2006 Actual
6) Total % Recommended, vs 2001 Actual
That information would at least put some perspective around the numbers. A reduction in temporary funding is a ‘cut’ vs the previous year, but it’s disingenuous to assume the prior years allotment is the necessary or optimal amount of funds to approve.