Copy of Debt Agreement Bill

A copy of the bill is available here. Apparently, there will be only $22 billion in spending cuts compared to the baseline for 2012. That is equivalent to a 0.6% cut in spending. These cuts in the growth of spending are backloaded, which means that there is no guarantee that any president and congress six, seven, eight or more years from now will follow through when they actually have to make the cuts. Might this agreement mean that taxes will be increased? It sure looks that way. In exchange for agreeing to make this level of cuts in spending, Democrats have gotten the chance to pick where most of the cuts will occur. If no agreement is reached for the second stage cuts, almost half the cuts will come out of defense.