As I was reading other blogs the other day, I noticed something. My blog doesn’t contain nearly enough over-the-top, annoying ranting about politics. Good news. The time has come.

It appears that our leaders have agreed to a deal touted as “the biggest annual spending cut in history”. Let’s look at that “biggest” decrease shall we?

$38.5 billion. That’s a lot of money…unless you put it into perspective. The budget for the year requires an estimated (according to the CBO) $3.708 trillion in spending (see the budget here). So, in a time of unprecedented deficit ($1.48 trillion) our lawmakers worked day and night to agree upon cuts. They emerged, touting themselves as heroes, because they agreed to trim our budget by a whopping 1%. ONE PERCENT. Let’s look at this another way.

Average couple Joe and Jane make $50,000 per year. Joe creates a budget for his household for the year that includes spending of $83,000. Jane slaps Joe in the face. Joe works really hard. He works feverishly day and night looking for places to cut that his wife will agree upon. Joe goes back to Jane. “Honey, I have made the largest cutbacks (dollar-wise, not percentage-wise) in the history of our family budget! We’re only going to spend $82,170!”

1% in cuts. We’re only cutting 2.6% of the deficit.

“But, Josh, there are other factors at play here.” I don’t care.

“But, Josh, you are way oversimplifying a massive issue.” Yes, I am…but I would also argue that others are over-complicating the issue to the point that they are taking inadequate action.

“But, Josh, we can’t afford to not stimulate the economy with government spending right now.” I don’t have the energy to debate the fallacies of Keynesian theory here. Someday perhaps-but it’s mind-numbingly boring. Also, I would argue that America has never needed government stimulation. Give us freedom. That’s all we need. We’ll take it from there (we always have).

Ok. I’ll end my rant now. “Americans of different beliefs came together again,” Obama said. I’ll finish his sentence, “to agree to order water instead of Coke when we eat at Outback Steakhouse.”