A good political cartoonist captures an argument or a concept in a single image, clearly and concisely. A great political cartoonist takes the familiar and timely and teaches a completely different lesson with it. One of my favorite cartoonists, the Washington Examiner’s Nate Beeler, demonstrates today why he’s one of the upper echelon in his field with “Political Jeopardy“:
Note the negative totals for both Obama and the Republicans, making the point that both have run up deficits while controlling Washington — although Obama has managed to generate his in record time.
It doesn’t take a genius to discover where most of the deficit originates. The FY2011 budget proposal from the White House contains $1.3 trillion in discretionary spending (including defense), $2.5 trillion in mandatory spending (entitlements and interest payments), and a $1.6 trillion deficit. Even someone manning an abacus could tell you that cutting discretionary spending — especially “non-defense discretionary spending,” which amounts to around $450 billion — won’t produce a balanced budget. Entitlements and other mandatory spending take two-thirds of the budget now and begin to climb to three-quarters in just a few years.
Be sure to check out Nate’s blog for more of his excellent work, featured at the indispensable Examiner.
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