There may be no clearer thinking American today than Canadian Mark Steyn.  He has an almost supernatural ability to see through smokescreens

In an article appearing this morning in Investor’s Business Daily, the America Alone author toys with the wisdom coming out of the so-called congressional Super-Committee like a cat with a ball of loosely-strung yarn. 

Here is Steyn exposing the Democrats sophistry in suggesting that money not spent on war is “savings” that can be spent on other things: 

But I underestimated the genius of the superfriends’ supercommittee. It turns out that a committee created to reduce the deficit is instead going to increase it. As the Hill reported:

“Democrats on the supercommittee have proposed that the savings from the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan be used to pay for a new stimulus package, according to a summary of the $2.3 trillion plan obtained by the Hill.”

Do you follow that? Let the Congressional Budget Office explain it to you: “The budget savings from ending the wars are estimated to total around $1 trillion over a decade, according to an estimate in July from the Congressional Budget Office.”

Let us note in passing that, according to the official CBO estimates, a whole decade’s worth of war in both Iraq and Afghanistan adds up to little more than Obama’s 2009 stimulus bill.

But, aside from that, in what sense are these “savings”? The Iraq War is ended — or, at any rate “ended” at least as far as U.S. participation in it is concerned. How then can congressional accountants claim to be able to measure “savings” in 2021 from a war that ended a decade earlier?

And why stop there? Why not estimate around $2 trillion in savings by 2031? After all, that would free up even more money for a bigger stimulus package, wouldn’t it? And it wouldn’t cost us anything because it would all be “savings.”

Come to think of it, didn’t the Second World War end in 1945? Could we have the CBO score the estimated two-thirds of a century of “budget savings” we’ve enjoyed since ending that war?

Think we could make a trade with our northern neighbors?  Say Mark Steyn for Michael Moore?