The ruling class intentionally made these cuts as painful as they could in order to cajole themselves to compromise, so they claim. Maybe that was their motivation, but I doubt it. Instead of cutting spending the right way, for example through Cut, Cap and Balance as advocated by the tea party, which was the responsible thing to do and would have improved the country, they decided to cut spending the worst way, the most painful way, (according to their own recent protestations about the sequester), but not for the reasons they claim, rather as a weapon aimed at those calling for fiscally sound economic policy. If they had to cut spending they wanted to make people pay so that they’d never try it again.

Well you know what? Tough luck, it was the ruling class plan, not mine. If they claim it’s the tea parties fault, they are lying. We wanted Cut, Cap and Balance. When they refused, I argued they should do a clean debt ceiling hike back in ’11, rather than this crooked deal. Cut it anyway, but don’t blame the tea party, blame the ruling class. Blame Obama and Boehner and all the people on both sides that voted for it.

2001: $366.2 billion
2002: $421.7 billion
2003: $482.9 billion
2004: $542.4 billion
2005: $600.0 billion
2006: $621.1 billion
2007: $652.6 billion
2008: $729.6 billion
2009: $794.0 billion
2010: $847.2 billion
2011: $878.5 billion
2012: $902.0 billion

That’s a 146.31% increase in defence spending since 2001. It goes hand-in-hand with the overall explosion in Federal spending. In FY2001, the government spent $1.8629 trillion. In FY2012, the Federal government spent $3.7956 trillion. That’s a 103.75% increase in spending since FY2001!

There Can Be No “Sacred Pork” – Defence Cuts Must Be On The Table