The budget debate has yet to reach critical mass on Capitol Hill, but here’s one Republican talking point to watch out for in the coming days: criticism of President Obama’s choice to put the cost of the Iraq war in the annual budget, rather than relying on “emergency supplemental” war funding that doesn’t impact the deficit (as George W. Bush did).
Rep. Paul Ryan (WI), the senior GOPer on the House Budget Committee, was the first to raise this point during a hearing with White House budget chief Peter Orszag on Tuesday. Ryan derided as a “budget gimmick” the Obama team’s decision to assume savings from a gradual end to the war in Iraq. As the AP put it, Ryan
told Orszag that administration claims of deficit-cutting are mostly bogus since the deficit would fall anyway as the war in Iraq winds down.
Orszag offered a rebuttal to this claim on his blog this afternoon, pointing out that former President George H.W. Bush assumed a similar savings from the gradual winding-down of the Cold War — which ultimately panned out.
As Orszag’s numbers show, assuming that defense spending would fall below the budget “baseline” (which Obama bases on 2008 previous war costs) ended up paying dividends for Bush 41.
The Senate Budget Committee’s Republicans go into more detail in their critique of the president’s budget, available for download here (second link from the top). The Senate GOPers argue that “the budget claims ‘silly’ savings by imagining new baselines,” asserting that the real model for 2010 war spending is what was spent so far in 2009, or $70 billion.
Now, at the risk of attempting to analyze a budget debate that’s far in the weeds, should the budget baseline assume a full year of war spending or a partial one? The former is a far more honest method.
