Tea Party has changed the trajectory of spending

Conn Carroll:
...

... if you look at the hard numbers -- if you look at the tax-and-spending trajectory that the United States was on before the 112th Congress was sworn into office, and then look at the path the U.S. is on now -- you'd see that Republicans in Congress have made tremendous progress in shrinking the size and scope of the federal government.

Just weeks after Huelskamp was first sworn in, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released its annual Budget and Economic Outlook for fiscal years 2011 through 2021. That document showed the federal government was on track to spend $3.7 trillion in 2011, or 24.7 percent of the entire U.S. economy, and a total of almost $50 trillion ($49.8 trillion to be exact) through 2021. At the same time, tax revenues were set to rise from just 14.8 percent of GDP in 2011 to 20.8 percent in 2021.

Huelskamp and his Republican colleagues changed all that. The 2011 Budget Control Act cut spending by $1.5 trillion, and the sequester cut it by an additional $1.2 trillion. At the same time, House Republicans were able to preserve nearly all of the expiring Bush tax cuts and cut the debt.

The CBO's Budget and Economic Outlook for fiscal years 2013 through 2023 shows just how much House Republicans have actually accomplished. The federal government is now on track to spend just $46.2 trillion through 2021. That is a $3.6 trillion spending cut. And instead of taxes eating up 21 percent of the U.S. economy in 2021, now the government is set to take in just 18.9 percent. The 2021 national debt is projected to be a bit lower, too, down from the earlier $18.25 trillion in 2011 to just $17.87 trillion today.

Despite all of this supposedly economy-killing "austerity," unemployment has steadily fallen, too. When Republicans took control of the House in 2011, the nation's unemployment rate was 9 percent. Today, it has fallen to 7.7 percent.
... 
Democrat policies are still holding back the economy, particularly Obamacare.  Obama's strangling of domestic production of energy on federal sites also is hurting the economy and jobs.  He also should approve the Keystone XL pipeline.  But restricting the growth of spending has been a good thing.

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