Politics Blog

Category: Spending

The real costs of policy - Updated

Building a bit more on the discussion of pricing and the media presentation of policy costs referenced here, Ezra Klein expands on those points in this column. As he notes, the framing of the rhetoric is a powerful tool:

"The stimulus, for instance, was explained as a two-year cost, so it was $800 billion, rather than $400 billion a year. Health-care reform is being sold as a 10-year cost, so it's $900 billion, rather than $90 billion a year. The defense appropriation is explained in terms of single-year cost, so it's $680 billion, as opposed to the $10 trillion or so that it would cost if you took into account expected growth."

As Ezra points out, policy wonks aren't so affected by these rhetorical tricks, but the average voter just hears the numbers and doesn't do the math. He makes a good point that if all policy was described by it's annual costs, it would be easier for the general public to understand the issues. For instance in looking at health care and defense spending, "how much is $90 billion as a percent of what we'll spend this year? How about $680 billion?" And that $680 billion does NOT include the price of maintaining our military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So maybe everyone who's obsessing about the runaway deficit might want to take a look at the sacred cow of "defense" spending. If we really want to eliminate our debt, I'm betting there's a possible $90 billion a year in cuts there that would easily pay for the relatively paltry cost of providing health care security for Americans.

Addendum: I no sooner published this when I found Matthew Yglesias posting on how much safer we would be if we invested more in our infrastructure and less on defense spending. Look at the chart. China, the next biggest spender, spent much less than $200bn to our $680bn. We "invest" in heavy military equipment we don't need and will be obsolete by the time we do need it, while China is investing in its future. There's a lesson there.