Fraud in the GOP's pledge to balance budget

Edward Luce in the Financial Times calls out the GOP's silly election year 'pledge'. Luce contrasts the Republicans recent Pledge to America to David Cameron's Conservative party pledge to UK voters precipitating their takeover of the British Parliament after many years in the minority.

Here's the crux of Luce's argument,

But the real contrast was in the substance. Although Mr Cameron’s Conservatives fudged the extent of spending cuts as the election approached, they stuck firmly to the line that there could be no tax cuts if Britain were to restore its budget to balance.

In contrast, John Boehner, the Republican leader in the House of Representatives, flanked by the “Young Guns”, only one of whom is younger than Mr Cameron, promised to maintain all the tax cuts that George W. Bush instituted, never raise any taxes again in any shape or form, and do all this while restoring America’s budget to balance.

All of which might have been plausible were it to have spelt out the draconian spending cuts that would therefore be necessary to bring the budget back to surplus. But it declined to do so. Instead it ring-fenced more than three-quarters of the US federal budget – social security, Medicare and defence spending – and promised to impose caps on the remaining, “discretionary” portion of it.

In numerical terms, the $320bn the party has specified in spending cuts over the next decade is dwarfed by the $4,000bn in tax cuts that it promises – all on top of the current double digit budget deficit.

There's no mystery here. The weight of Empire is bankrupting us as surely has it has bankrupted every empire before us.

It takes a real effort and concerted effort to loose elections to these buffoons.