Unserious About the Budget

The negotiations over the budget compromise reached this week between Republicans and Democrats in Washington demonstrate the depths of Democrats' attachment to enormous levels of government spending.

Notwithstanding that the 2011 federal budget deficit is estimated to be a staggering $1.6 trillion, Obama's original budget called for an increase in government "discretionary" spending. After facing determined Republican efforts to cut spending this year, Obama and the Democrats came out for holding "discretionary" spending flat - that's right, in the face of a $1.6 trillion deficit, the Democrats proposed no reductions in spending.

The final compromise seems (I say "seems" because there is some debate that some of the cuts are recissions of spending authority that may not have been spent anyway, so the actual reduction may be less than the announced $39 billion) to cut spending by about $39 billion, or a cut of a little more than 2% of the budget deficit and 1% of government spending. That's it. Mountains of deficit spending, and Democratic opposition held the reduction to 2% of the deficit.

Look at the debate over funding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting ("CPB"), which gets over $400 million a year from the federal government. Government funding for the CPB started in the 1960s under the stated goal of promoting alternative programming to the dominance of the three broadcast networks. Well, there is so much alternative programming today - think of the hundreds of channels available on cable and satellite TV, plus the ability to stream entertainment from the internet - that the ostensible reason for the CPB no longer exists. Moreover, there is little doubt that devoted viewers and advocates of public TV would increase their donations to make up any funding shortfall if the government ended its subsidies to public broadcasting.

If a government with a $1.6 trillion deficit can't eliminate spending on the CPB, we are not being serious about the fiscal crisis facing the nation.

But the Democrats went to the mat to defend the CPB subsidies. They probably worry that Democratic fundraisers and activists, who fund so much of the left's political and social agenda, would divert some of their contributions toward public broadcasting and away from electing Democrats.