War Ends, War Spending Goes On

I have not directly looked at how the accounting was done in the 2010 budget. It looks as if the Iraq war spending was added to the budget just to claim the savings. Technically it is savings, you are no longer spending the money but is very misleading. It was borrowed money to begin with. It does not mean you have more to spend. Savings is jusst shy of newsspeak, call it Obama speak.

Ace of Spades

'So here's how he comes up with $1.6 trillion of his $2 trillion in "cuts:" He takes the 2008, peak-of-the-surge cost of the Iraq War as our permanent Iraq War spending baseline. He extends that out ten years -- including goosing it down the line for inflation.

Then he notes that he's ending a war which was actually pretty much ended by our troops (and the Iraqis, too) by defeating Al Qaeda and ending the insurgency.

Then he says,"Hey, man, look -- every year I'm going to be saving money on those Iraq War costs! Count it as a 'cut'!"'

I find the rest of it entertaining, being on blogger I won't repeat.

The Never-ending Surge

"This is, even by Washington standards, unusually dishonest. And coming from the administration of Barack Obama, who promised us “honest” accounting and made a big show of how much integrity and candor he would bring to his governing, this is astonishing."

You take last years subtract what your not going to spend and then add what else you want to spend. That is the way it is always talked about in this manner. So what does this mean for all the spending next year? If we spend like we did this year next year then they "held the line on spending". This is exactly what is argued about the stimulus package, only they are talking about the war ending not the need for stimulus ending.