https://hotair.com/headlines/archives/2013/01/09/obamas-no-spending-problem-fallacy/feed/HotAir is the leading conservative blog for breaking news and commentary covering the Biden administration, politics, media, culture, and current elections.en-usTue, 09 Jun 2026 06:27:31 -0400<![CDATA[This seems to be one of the semi-official pilllars of Obama’s thinking–that future deficits are driven by Medicare and Medicaid spending, not spending bloat generally. Even AEI’s James Pethokoukis concedes Obama is “more or less right about that.”** So what’s the problem with “no spending problem”? The problem is that money is fungible. If you’re spending too much on health care, one way to pay for it is to raise taxes. But another way to pay for it is to cut some spending elsewhere and use that money to pay for the health care. Suppose we had a retirement program (let’s call it “Social Security”) that was scheduled to soak up 6.2% of GDP a quarter of a century from now–but by cutting benefits for the most affluent third (mens-testing) we could lower that to, say, 5.2%. That’s a full percent of GDP we could apply instead to Medicare and Obamacare. &#8230;]]>Wed, 09 Jan 2013 18:40:40 -0500<![CDATA[Erika Johnsen]]>https://hotair.com/headlines/2013/01/09/obamas-no-spending-problem-fallacy-n99057