The Wrong Pork

This ain't ribs or shoulder, it's pure tripe:

Politicians have two ways of responing when they are caught doing something that outrages voters: They can stop the behavior or they can find a way to continue it in a manner that's difficult for voters to observe. On wasteful spending, the Democrats have chosen the latter course, and in so doing, have revealed indefensible and fundamental biases in the methods Congress asks the Congressional Budget Office to employ.

Notice how sharply the treatment of spending differs from the treatment of tax cuts. President George W. Bush's tax cuts are set to expire, and any attempt to renew them looks like it will cost hundreds of billions of dollars relative to the baseline. Because of that ppearance, Democrats regularly wail about the horrible deficit effects of extending the cuts.

But according to the CBO, there is approximately $1.3 trillion worth of mandatory spending that is also set to expire. If you add the discretionary spending that is also built into the CBO baseline, then there are spending extensions that cost about as much as the tax-cut extensions. But since the spending is in the baseline, Democrats get to pretend that its extension costs nothing extra.

Read it all. Then puke.