Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart was confused on Monday’s The Daily Show why the GOP’s spending reforms in the Big Beautiful Bill would target the areas of the budget where the most money is spent. Together with economic commentator and author Kyla Scanlon, the duo would conclude that it is easier to cut from people than lobbyists.
Stewart wondered, “The thing that strikes me about this is, whenever we talk about an economy being irresponsible in terms of spending, the go-to fall guy for that, the go-to scapegoat, are the poor. Is that the conventional wisdom in economics, you know, ‘our deficit is out of control? You nor we could take it out of? Medicaid.’ Is that—is austerity conventional wisdom when there’s deficit spending?”
Scanlon admitted that if you want to cut spending, it makes sense to focus on the areas where the government spends the most money but still opposed such a move, “Yeah, so austerity is reducing the deficit by cutting spending or raising taxes, and so the common idea about cutting spending is that you’ll go after the things that we spend a lot of money on, which is Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and so that's the first thing they went after. I don't think it is a smartest thing to go after, but it is a big part of what the government spends money on and so I think it was, you know, first to go, which is sad because you shouldn't go after people, and you should think about raising taxes instead of cutting them.”
[See NewsBusters for more]
