Spending Cuts Are Hard

Associated Press: “The budget gurus in Congress have failed for years to find a grand bargain to reduce the government’s long-term debt, so this year they decided to go small. Just 1 percentage point would be shaved from the annual cost-of-living increase in military pensions for veterans under age 62.”

“That strategy failed, too. Congress promptly caved in to pressure from the powerful veterans lobby and voted last month to restore the bigger pension increases it had cut just two months earlier. It didn’t matter that the Pentagon itself called the reduction fair and necessary.”

“Vague bromides and promises about deficits and spending are easy for politicians. Real spending cuts aren’t. Despite all the national talk of needing to tackle deficit spending, the military pensions debacle illustrates how Americans and their elected officials continue to resist — often fiercely — cuts to almost any specific program, big or small.”

The Week: Memo to fiscal hawks: The long term deficit doesn’t matter.