President Obama has released the details of his fiscal 2010 budget, most of which had been widely known since February, but he did add a proposal to kill or cut 121 federal programs for a savings of $17 billion. The president insisted it was not “chump change,” but like his request of his Cabinet to find $100 million in administrative savings, this one was ridiculed by critics as too small to make a difference — less than half of 1 percent of planned federal spending. Though these cuts are small in the totality of the budget, they have great symbolic importance as a test of Obama’s determination to fight for them and a test of his seriousness in tackling the federal deficit. Indeed, many of the targeted spending cuts were culled from a list of 151 projects that President Bush had tried to kill or cut. But over time the Republican-run Congress came to believe that it could ignore that president’s fitful attempts at fiscal discipline. In the totality of the federal budget, $17 billion really is chump change, but, chump or not, facing a fiscal 2010 budget deficit that could reach $1.5 trillion, the president and Congress have to start somewhere. — Scripps Howard News Service editorial
They call this restraint? President Obama proposed cutting $17 billion from the federal budget — barely one half of 1 percent. All while spending $3.4 trillion. Pain? Restraint? Indeed, such cuts are like your average Joe or Jane, on a $50,000-a-year salary, trimming all of $5 a week. Or as Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., put it, “taking a little teaspoon of water out of the ocean while you’re dumping a whole river in.” Obama’s paltry slices, by the way, come after his fiscal watchdogs supposedly scoured the budget “line by line” to find inefficiency and waste. And spending-addicted Democrats may well consider even these negligible trims too much: Many were lifted from those President Bush sought — and didn’t get — last year. And don’t think there’d be any serious drop in federal spending, anyway: The budget blueprint recently adopted by Congress actually hikes domestic discretionary spending by 9 percent. Most troubling, though, is the spike in the federal deficit — which will soar to a whopping $1.38 trillion in the next fiscal year alone. “There is a lot of money that’s being spent inefficiently, ineffectively and, in some cases, in ways that are actually pretty stunning,” Obama said Thursday. Yes, there sure is. Too bad he and his budgeteers were able to find so little of it. — New York Post editorial
20 Comments
There’s plenty to cut in the bloated military budget. $200 billion could easily be cut out of that, but Republicans will whine because they want those pork barrel projects and deficit spending.
China, Japan and other lenders who finance the irresponsible U.S. national debt are ecstatically happy at the news the U.S. debt will grow another $1.5 trillion in the next U.S. fiscal year. These lenders will receive another five percent or so of this increase in the American national debt. This debt repayment is already the largest annual payout from the U.S. government.
But as I have said for years since first reading about the National Debt in the “Weekly Reader” in grade school … no incentive exists for politicians to stop spending. Their excuse is the “next” politicians should stop this growth of spending … but it never happens.
We need a constitutional amendment halting growth of the national debt.
Dick Cheney says that deficits don’t matter.
17 billion isn’t much at all – they could probably glean four times that much by cutting the health care of the fossilized Congressmen, eliminating funds to Planned parenthood and striking out the ‘big gift’ to A.C.O.R.N.
The article phrased it accurately, “$17 billion really is chump change”. Obama should be embarrassed to even call it a cut, and we should be embarrassed for putting him where he is.
The deficit is growing at a staggering fast rate under his administration, he is breaking records.
It will eventually bring this country and the dollar to near 3rd world country status and bring hardship on ourselves our children and grandchildren for generations.
XXX Dick Cheney and his party lost the election. The GOP was sent packing. The dems ran on a promise of change. I’m still waiting for that change.
You can only blame the previous administration so long and in my opinion that time has passed. I’m HOPEing we will see the CHANGE real soon.
“okobserver” observes –
“You can only blame the previous administration so long….”
So we can expect you CONs will never ever mention Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter or FDR again, right?
Monkey quoting history isn’t blaming. You oh literal one should know the difference.
17 billion?
Hell, he could have saved that much by refusing to pass the stimulus with that much in pork spending.
It is estimated that the fraud on Medicade and Medicare is at 60 billion a year.
But hey, Obama cut 17 billion in spending… and the liberal Kool-Aid drinkers rejoice!
It does not matter who the President currently is, there is decades of fat and bloat in the Federal budget.
Each item of fat and bloat has its defenders no matter what the excess is. Or why it was there in the first place. There are situations where its like the old person who no longer can live on their own and still own a house. It is of no use to them and no one wants it in the family, but it still is being held on to. draining the resources, demanding money for upkeep. But has lost it usefulness and need. Such things can be and should be cut out. To become fiscally fit it starts with the quickest costs you can cut not what the real savings is.
The government can’t even run it’s current programs very well and the liberals rejoice as Obama expands government even more while offering a cut of a mere 17 billion.
How much do you think the increased government programs will waste in comparison to that?
And the liberal Kool-Aid drinkers rejoice!
“Though these cuts are small in the totality of the budget, they have great symbolic importance as a test of Obama’s determination to fight for them and a test of his seriousness in tackling the federal deficit.”
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Yeah!!! Hopefully we get a good exchange rate on “great symbolic importance” relative to actual deficits/debt. He’s definitely proven he’s got the “symbolic importance” gig down pat.
Obama could make a symbolic cut on how much he spends by taking that teleprompter around with him everywhere he goes.
Yeah, Scripps and NYP are both staring bankruptcy in the face, and someone forgot to bail ‘em out! Too bad they don’t seem to know the right politicians.
Funny how repubs can whine and stay single focused on 17 bil. when it’s earmarks, but when it’s budget cuts, they call it chump change.
Does that mean Mccain has dedicated his career in trying to reduce ‘chump change’, or that repubs wasted months in complaining about the ‘chump change earmarks’?
JWink: China has a population of about 1.3 billion people of whom about 1.1 billion have a standard of living on a par with Nigeria. Only the coast is prospering making a whole bunch of things, which China cannot consume on her own, so she must continue to sell abroad or face social unrest at home which puts the West and the US in particular in a stonger postition that we normally accept. China has seen revolutions before and those hundreds of millions of workers without a job could be a nightmare worse than the Cultural Revolution of Mao. They need us badly and will continue to by lunch to keep getting the orders
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okobserver
Posted May 9, 2009 at 9:43 am | Permalink
XXX Dick Cheney and his party lost the election. The GOP was sent packing. The dems ran on a promise of change. I’m still waiting for that change.
You can only blame the previous administration so long and in my opinion that time has passed. I’m HOPEing we will see the CHANGE real soon.
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Okobserver, with all due respect if you don’t see change, you’re blind as a bat. It pains me to think you could be that stupid.
“You can only blame the previous administration so long”
I can’t believe you have the gall to say that. Republicans used Clinton as a whipping boy for years.
You can only blame the last admin. for so long (it was for a full six yrs. for dubya, and repubs),so what’s the rush?
X,
Clinton? Hell, they’re still blaming Carter for Nixon’s resignation!
Phantom wrote:
“Does that mean Mccain has dedicated his career in trying to reduce ‘chump change’, or that repubs wasted months in complaining about the ‘chump change earmarks’?”
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McCain (and I’m not a McCain supporter), also called for a budget freeze, to which Obama responded with his “scalpel vs hatchet” diatribes. McCain also vowed to end “no bid” contracts. Did he not get loads of heat for supporting EADS/Airbus contract because it was “cheaper”? Funny, that Obama referred to McCain’s call for zero earmarks, estimated to save $18B at the time as meaningless, but now calls slightly smaller cuts a cornerstone to his commitment to fiscal responsibility. He’s trying to play both sides, just like any other career politician does. Just like the GOP does, no different.