Via

President Obama’s campaign made some tasty mince meat of Rick Santorum’s deficit cutting brilliance. They maintain that Ricky’s ideas would have to “essentially shut down the government or slash retiree benefits to match the president on deficit reduction,” per The Hill.

They also attacked Willard Romney’s strategy, saying he and Ricky both love them tax cuts and would spend even more money that nobody has on defense, which would add trillions to the deficit over the next 10 years:

“To match the president on deficit reduction, Santorum would have to eliminate all defense and non-defense discretionary spending,” [campaign economist Jeffrey] Liebman said. Non-defense discretionary spending includes government “overhead” — salaries, office space, etc. Without it, the government would essentially shut down.

Lieberman said the only way to avoid that would be for Santorum to make deep cuts to retirement benefits for current seniors.

Santorum has vowed to cut spending by $5 trillion over five years, but these cuts do not make up for the tax cuts he proposes, according to the Obama campaign.

“Santorum is definitely operating in fantasyland,” said Liebman, a former deputy director at the Office of Management and Budget. “By far, these are the most unrealistic budget plans I have ever seen.”

Cutting retirement benefits is exactly what they would do, as well as privatizing Medicare, essentially killing it. Just ask Paul Ryan.

Please read the rest here.