Strangely, in spite of what is claimed by the right-wing Heritage, those spending cuts have nothing at all to do with the majority of the money spent in the past 4-6 years. Nor does it address what caused our deficits, and what is continuing to contribute to the deficit. Here's what has caused our deficits:
BTW, the majority of TARP has already been paid back, with us making a profit of $53 billion in interest.
Those spending cuts come out of only 14-17% of our budget (the rest is defense, entitlements, etc - which are not touched, apparently, by Heritage's recommendations) are are simply
the usual right-wing culture wars on education, FDA, EPA, etc.
Nothing new there. Except that if conservatives really wanted to touch that stuff, they would have already done so when they were in control. They don't like to cut, they like to spend. How Dems got to be known as the party of spend is a mystery, as the last 40-60 years show the GOP excelling at it.
In fact, that reminds me, the current GOP in the House said that everything in the budget must be funded - except for tax cuts. The GOP loves giving unfunded tax cuts. Cut the governments revenue, but don't stop spending - put it on the credit card. Reagan, Bush I, Bush II - they all did it. Uniquely a GOP phenomenon, and that's exactly what gave us our huge trillions in deficit today.
We could eliminate the majority of our deficit - that huge dark gold area-under-the-curve on the graph, above - by simply allowing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest to expire. Obama should not have just caved to the GOP on that. Bringing home the troops from the wars will get another good chunk.