The Center for American Progress have trumpeted a BIG LIE that kept being repeated again and again by elected Dem big shots like Chris Van Hollen and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. The following is the BIG LIE. source

The Republican-led House of Representatives this week will consider legislation that would effectively endorse restricting federal spending to the arbitrary level of 18 percent of gross domestic product. That would require the slashing of important and popular programs far below even the draconian levels of the 2012 budget approved by the House earlier this year. The United States would be the lowest-spending economically advanced country in the world.

The last time the United States had spending this low was in 1966. Much has changed since then, which makes a federal budget at that level both impractical and undesirable. We are an older country, with more retirees receiving the Social Security and Medicare benefits they’ve earned during their working lives. Social Security benefits have been consciously increased to improve the quality of life for retirees. Health care costs have multiplied so providing Medicare, veterans’ care, and Medicaid is much more expensive. Education has become more costly, and government fuel costs have risen along with everyone else’s.

We are a very different country than we were back then, with very different needs and with stronger economic competitors making investments in their own countries to make themselves strong. We must match those investments to remain the No. 1 economy and the most competitive nation on earth. We simply can’t put a 1966 transmission into a 2012 Mustang.

Rush Limbaugh today spoke about the lies and the hyperbole the tax and spend Liberal dems have been using for years.

It hits you upside the head, a cold ice shower. You realize what suckers they think we are. You realize the patterns — the playbooks, the tactics, the scare tactics, the fearmongering, crisis mongering, all of this — are written down. It’s taught. This is not instinctive. This stuff, I guess, is what these people learn at Harvard and Yale and the Kennedy School of Government, wherever else they go to get educated or how they’re mentored. Not one shred of difference. The difference now is that we’ve reached a point of real crisis. All these years in the past where we said, “Okay, we’ll kick the can down the road. We’ll deal with it later.” We’ve gotten to the point we’re running out of road. We really are. This is different.

Matt Cover of CNS News has written an article that truthfully tells what is written into the Cap Cut and Balance Bill.

While it is true that a House Judiciary Committee amendment would have set the cap at 18 percent of GDP, that amendment was not adopted. The actual caps in the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act never go below 19.6 percent of GDP, eventually settling at 19.9 percent of GDP in 2021.

The Cut, Cap, and Balance bill would increase the debt ceiling by $2.4 trillion while at the same time cut spending in fiscal year 2012 by $111 billion, cap spending in future years at a steadily decreasing level, eventually setting it at 19.9 percent of GDP in 2021, and pass a balanced budget amendment through both chambers of Congress.

The debt ceiling increase would happen only after the balanced budget amendment has been passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification.

So let’s take 19.6 as a cap baseline instead of 18.0 as a baseline. When I looked into the history I discover some interesting years when the federal spending outlays were 19.6 or less as a percent of GDP.

The reason for a NA instead of a name is because the House and Senate Budget Committees did not exist until the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 became law in July of 1974. From George Washington until Richard Nixon’s last year in office, presidents had the power to impound. The president’s power to impound monies was the only way, aside from a presidential veto, that the executive branch could check the otherwise unbridled spending power of the legislative branch. In 1974 congress reformed the budget process and destroyed the impoundment power of the executive. Contrary to the wailing from the obamadems that the budget caps are so draconian the programs for the poor, elderly, and sick will get slashed – history shows that it did not happen. In fact in five of these 12 years the outlays were less than had been budgeted to provide a federal budget surplus. If only the Republican leaders had the stones, like Allen West, to call those lying Dems out instead of their playbook consisting of one word. Duck!

Cross-posted at Unified Patriots