Posted by
The CL Project on Tuesday, April 21, 2009 1:08:45 PM
Following Tax Day's "tea party" demonstrations against massive government spending and as Congress reconvenes to try to hammer out a budget deal, President Obama met with his full cabinet today for the first time in his presidency to ask them share in the pain of the American people asking them to cut the budget by $100 million.
Marvel at the fiscal responsibility.
That's right, after both chambers of Congress passed Obama's $3.5 trillion budget outline for 2010, which contemplates a $1.2 trillion deficit, the President now says that "We have an obligation . . . to make sure that this government is as efficient as possible." Let us not forget that while Obama continues to claim that his budget would cut the deficit by half by the end of his term, his spending plan would double the national debt.
While it's true that cutting back on government spending has to start somewhere - let's be very clear: $100 million represents .003 percent of $3.5 trillion. It is worth noting that Obama's marching orders to the Cabinet were less than meets the eye. Why? Because many of the savings he asked them to achieve are already under way.
The British have an old saying: Penny-Wise, Pound-Foolish. This is taking this saying to new levels - not Pound-Foolish, but trillion dollar foolish.
The Heritage Foundation has a great visualization*of this ridiculousness:
And Greg Mankiw, economics professor at Harvard, puts things in perspective by comparing Obama's spending cut figure to the budget he just proposed:
To put those numbers in perspective, imagine that the head of a household with annual spending of $100,000 called everyone in the family together to deal with a $34,000 budget shortfall. How much would he or she announce that spending had be cut? By $3 over the course of the year--approximately the cost of one latte at Starbucks. The other $33,997? We can put that on the family credit card and worry about it next year.
It could be funny if it wasn't so insulting to taxpayers.
UPDATE: AP - Obama's latest budget-tightening effort hardly makes a dime's worth of difference.
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