Ron Paul: On the Super Committee!

This week marks the deadline for the so-called congressional "Super Committee" to meet its goal of cutting a laughably small amount of federal spending over the next decade. In fact, the Committee merely needs to meet its goal to cut about $120 billion annually from the federal budget over the next 10 years to meet its modest goals, but even this paltry amount has produced hand-wringing and hysteria on Capitol Hill. This is only cutting proposed increases. It has nothing to do with actually cutting anything. This shows how "unserious" politicians are about our very serious debt problems. To be fair, however, in one sense members of the Super Committee face an impossible task: They must, in effect, cut government spending without first addressing the role of govern- ment in our society. They must continue to insist the federal government can provide Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits in the future, as promised, while maintaining our wildly interventionist foreign policy. Yet everyone knows this is a lie. Keep in mind that the 2011 federal deficit alone was about $1.3 trillion, which means the Super Committee needs to cut that much PER YEAR, rather than over a 10 year period. If Congress ever hopes to address its debt problem, it must first stop accumulating any new debt immediately, in 2012.