Political Spin on a Used Car Salesman Scale

Anybody who watches politics must be prepared for spin to the border of falsehood, but in Brian Riedl's telling, it's difficult not to conclude that the Obama administration has stepped well into the range of what would more accurately be called scams and con jobs:

Last spring, President Obama proposed $11.3 billion worth of discretionary spending cuts. Today's Washington Times notes that Congress accepted $6.9 billion worth of these cuts, a 61 percent success rate.

In a $3.6 trillion federal budget, that comes to just 0.2 percent of the federal budget.

But there is a larger issue:100 percent of the savings from these "cuts" were automatically shifted into new spending. Total federal spending was not reduced by one dollar.

Moreover, the cuts were mainly in defense spending, so spending on things that most of us associate with "big government" actually increased as a result of these "cuts." Unbelievable.