James Pethokoukis writing at the AEI Enterprise blog, examines the president's "balanced" plan to cut $4.4 trillion from the budget over the next decade. James points out that the plan is a "reheating of his 80-page deficit reduction package from September 2011 which, on paper, showed $2 in spending cuts for every $1 in taxes raised. Not so fast: But once you begin to dig into the numbers, the plan doesn't look balanced at all. As the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget noted back then: The Administration claims that the plan would save about $4.4 trillion in total (including interest savings, war savings, and the costs of the jobs proposals). However ... counting the war savings is counting a policy that is already in place and is thus a gimmick to be avoided. Taking out the war savings and savings from the discretionary cuts in the Budget Control Act leads to total savings of less than $2 trillion. Of the supposed savings, then, $1.6 trillion comes from...(Read Full Post)