CNN: Obama will slice budget by $17 billion:
The White House on Thursday will detail a proposal to save $17 billion next year by eliminating or reducing 121 federal programs, according to a senior administration official.The White House on Thursday will detail a proposal to save $17 billion next year by eliminating or reducing 121 federal programs, according to a senior administration official.
Roughly $11.5 billion of the savings would come from the discretionary side of the fiscal 2010 budget — that is, for programs whose funding is not automatic. And roughly half of the savings would come from non-defense programs, the official said Wednesday.
“In many cases we have multiple programs that do the same things,” the official said in a briefing call with reporters. “Duplication can be the enemy of efficiency.”
In other cases, the results of the targeted programs didn’t justify the expense, the official said.
Sober. Centrist. Fiscally responsible and — dare we say it? — fiscally conservative.
A uniter, our President is. A moderate. A man who enjoys a good Hell Burger with his pal Joe (and if MSNBC wants to livecast his blue collar ethic to the masses, so be it).
A real pragmatist.
Or, you know. Not. Fox News:
President Obama is taking a scalpel, instead of an axe, to the federal budget.Obama’s promised line-by-line scrub of the federal budget has produced a roster of 121 budget cuts totaling $17 billion — or about one-half of 1 percent of the $3.4 trillion budget Congress has approved for next year.
[...]
White House budget director Peter Orszag said the president’s plan for program cuts is just a start and that a lot more needs to be done to dig the government out of its fiscal hole, especially curbing the growth of the Medicare and Medicaid health care programs for the elderly and the poor.
“But $17 billion a year is not chump change by anyone’s accounting,” he said.
Those savings are far exceeded by a phone-book-sized volume detailing Obama’s generous increases for domestic programs that will accompany the call for cuts. And instead of devoting the savings to defray record deficits, the White House is funneling them back into other programs.
Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, told FOX News that he’s not impressed by Obama’s $17 billion proposed cut.
“It’s as if you took a teaspoon of water out of the bathtub while you left the spicket on at full speed,” he said, referring to Obama’s $3.4 trillion budget.
“Basically right now we’re running up a debt that is so high as a percentage of our gross national product that we couldn’t even get into the European union,” he said. “I mean we’re headed to third-world country status if we keep this up.”
Well, not all of us, Senator Gregg.
For the leadership class, no doubt the private health care and the dijon will always keep flowing — some pigs, of necessity, being more equal than others.
(h/t JHoward)
Comment by Zelda on 5/7 @ 1:10 pm #
I don’t want them to start looking for ways to save money. For every billion they save, it’s another trillion they’ll spend.
Comment by JHoward on 5/7 @ 1:21 pm #
As keen as CNN is, they may want to see about getting airport broadcast contracts. Reach the masses with the good word.
Comment by The Sanity Inspector on 5/7 @ 1:26 pm #
So as the federal budget is calculated as “last year + X%” the deficit will never come down.
Comment by happyfeet on 5/7 @ 1:27 pm #
It seems like we’ve been thorless since I got back form Texas. Hey. Seventeen billion dollars is even less than the sum of three quarters of losses for the General Motors what our dirty socialist piece of shit president wants to steal and give to his greasy UAW thug pals.
Comment by Squid on 5/7 @ 1:28 pm #
Spicket? Really?
Comment by happyfeet on 5/7 @ 1:29 pm #
oh. *from* Texas… and did I read that right that half the cuts are defense cuts? What exactly is this douche cutting from defense? Is it missile defense?
Comment by happyfeet on 5/7 @ 1:32 pm #
For every dollar we seek to save there will be those who have an interest in seeing it spent,” said America’s first dirty socialist hungarian muppet piece of shit president.
He’s a goddamn genius I think.
Comment by JD on 5/7 @ 1:33 pm #
He is cutting nothing, other than reducing the tremendous seficit that he himself proposed. Even if you accept this, he will run deficits in the trillions. As happy noted, he is giving more to the UAW than he is “cutting”.
Comment by Matt on 5/7 @ 1:36 pm #
Senator Greg was contacted by Senator Reid, who indicated the Dear Leader was not pleased by Greg’s comments and if Greg didn’t shut up, the wrath of the Washington press corps would be unleashed.
Personally, I don’t want to think about Helen Thomas unleased. Or leashed really. Or wearing a spiked dog color. In fact, I prefer to just never think about Helen Thomas at all. So obviously, epic fail on my part.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 5/7 @ 1:39 pm #
“. And roughly half of the savings would come from non-defense programs, the official said Wednesday.”
Trust reactionary leftists to auto-castrate American defenses.
Comment by charles austin on 5/7 @ 1:43 pm #
A 50% increase in the federal budget is matched by a 0.5% decrease in the federal budget. I understood there was to be no math required in the White House Press Corps. What’s the problem?
Just curious, but how much was in the budget for projects with the name Murtha or Byrd attached to them?
But hey, it’s sing along time:
What shall we do with a drunken sailor?
What shall we do with a drunken sailor?
What shall we do with a drunken sailor?
Early in the morning?
Comment by kelly on 5/7 @ 1:53 pm #
“But $17 billion a year is not chump change by anyone’s accounting,†he said.
…Presumably with a straight face. The honor among thieves is so touching.
Pingback by Jules Crittenden » Get Real on 5/7 @ 1:59 pm #
[...] Protein Wisdom with a couple of alternate views. [...]
Comment by charles austin on 5/7 @ 2:08 pm #
So, for each of the first 106 days of Year 0, President Obama has laid out spending of $32 billion while proposing cuts of $160 million — each and every day. Let’s face it, 160 is a five times bigger than 32. C’mon people, Google it!
Comment by kelly on 5/7 @ 2:13 pm #
So that’s how it’s done. Seems so obvious now. In order to get out of a hole, dig an even bigger freaking hole! Throw away the spade and bring in the backhoes! Unionize the gravediggers!
(That oughta bring out the racist denuciations.)
Comment by BJT-FREE! on 5/7 @ 2:16 pm #
This is going to be the post doctoral application of the meme that reducing an increase in a budget item constitutes a cutting of the budget.
Those of us who would like to see more clarity in language would probably like to see the word cut used as an indicator of a net decrease in spending, rather than an amelioration if increases. Those of us who feel this way are likely to be gravely disappointed.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 5/7 @ 2:24 pm #
“Orszag”
Sounds like an Orc name.
I’m suspicious.
Comment by Ric Locke on 5/7 @ 2:27 pm #
BJT: that’s been going on since at least the Sixties, when I first became aware of politics.
Politician A: “I propose an increase of eleventy quadrillion smackeroons for combatting tattoo addiction in preschoolers.”
Politician B: “We can do it just as well for seventy quadrillion smackeroons.”
Politician A (and the Press): “B wants a drastic cut in aid to preschoolers.”
Regards,
Ric
Comment by kelly on 5/7 @ 2:28 pm #
Completely OT but as a gift to ‘feets: Meghan’s back.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-05-07/the-gop-is-clueless-about-sex/
Comment by The Sanity Inspector on 5/7 @ 2:36 pm #
“But $17 billion a year is not chump change by anyone’s accounting,†he said.
In Washington, they throw sums like that around like taxicab tips.
Comment by kelly on 5/7 @ 2:40 pm #
The official added, “Quadrupling, quintupling, or even better, increasing by a magnitude of 100, however, can be very, very friendly to efficiency. I mean, c’mon, duplication by the previous administration got us into this mess.”
Comment by kelly on 5/7 @ 2:42 pm #
$17 billion is a rounding error.
Comment by BJT-FREE! on 5/7 @ 2:43 pm #
Yea, yea, Ric, i know that. I’m in my delusional idealistic mode.
Comment by lee on 5/7 @ 2:45 pm #
Happyfeet, best be careful, they’re plotting ways to handle extremist haters like you.
Comment by BJT-FREE! on 5/7 @ 2:47 pm #
Hmmmm … JD has been causing me extreme emotional distress. Can I have him arrested?
If not, then a good felching would be OK.
Comment by geoffb on 5/7 @ 2:53 pm #
They figure eventually to come out the other side and we will be in China, the late 60’s version however, so beloved of Ayers and company.
Comment by Matt on 5/7 @ 2:53 pm #
Megan knows what oral sex is and she learned from clinton.
That explains almost everything.
Comment by Tman on 5/7 @ 3:01 pm #
The part that pisses me off the most about Obama making the argument that this is big deal -saving the equivalent of $18 out of $3800- is that during the campaign debates McCain would constantly bring up the one thing I liked about him, his passion for eliminating earmarks. And Obama would repeatedly say that even if we eliminated the earmarks it was “only” a few billion so what’s the big deal?
Seriously, fuck this lying sack of shit right up his ass. Every day he gives me a new reason to hate him.
Comment by Jeffersonian on 5/7 @ 3:03 pm #
oh. *from* Texas… and did I read that right that half the cuts are defense cuts? What exactly is this douche cutting from defense? Is it missile defense?
Yeah, but hap, it’s not like defense is a federal responsibility like health care, day care, senior care or any of the myriad other cares James Madison wrote into the Constitution.
Comment by kelly on 5/7 @ 3:04 pm #
“If not, then a good felching would be OK.”
Hmm. I wonder if Meghan knows what felching is. Wasn’t that in the Starr Report as well?
Comment by geoffb on 5/7 @ 3:09 pm #
If they publish the text of that law on the internet can I have the authors of the bill put in jail for two years for their coercing, intimidating, harassing, and causing me substantial emotional distress? Seems like a slam dunk unless “we” are not all equal anymore.
Comment by kelly on 5/7 @ 3:19 pm #
From Brian Riedl in The Corner:
It’s almost like we’re being lied to or something.
Comment by Jeffersonian on 5/7 @ 3:22 pm #
It’s all in service to a greater truth, kelly. Eggs and omelets, eggs and omelets…
Comment by bh on 5/7 @ 3:27 pm #
I think I might owe an apology to all the gold bugs I’m met in my life.
Comment by kelly on 5/7 @ 3:29 pm #
Just so, Jeffersonian.
Sorry, I’m just a little disappointed that none of the more puerile among us hasn’t taken my link to Meghan’s post and come up with something oh-so-clever like “A Tale of Two Titties.”
Comment by bh on 5/7 @ 3:30 pm #
I’m=I’ve
Comment by donald on 5/7 @ 3:30 pm #
Our president has truly earned an aneuryism.
Comment by kelly on 5/7 @ 3:31 pm #
No kidding, bh. Mea culpa.
Comment by happyfeet on 5/7 @ 3:37 pm #
That’s creepy, Lee, but you are honor-bound to get charged under that law if they pass it I think and I would for sure get charged many numerous times. Fascists aren’t so tough not these pussy Chicago ones anyway.
I tried. I promise. But I couldn’t click on the Meghan link. It has something to do with sex. Meghan’s sex thoughts. Gack. Voluminous mounds of perfumed Meghan flesh.
Comment by happyfeet on 5/7 @ 3:40 pm #
Could put you off your feed, that right there.
Comment by Mikey NTH on 5/7 @ 3:41 pm #
#6 haps:
It will be sufficient cuts to defense so that the United States can no longer cause all of the problems in the world. American influence – military, economic, and cultural – causes all of the world’s problems. Except Cuba’s. Cuba’s problems are caused by lack of contact with the United States.
Comment by happyfeet on 5/7 @ 3:46 pm #
Cuba – that’s just evil what they’re doing there – but I still sort of think that the more defining approach the Obama muppet will take with the military will mostly be about tying it down and gold-plating it as much as possible to where it’s too expensive to use. I think cuts will be aimed mostly at attenuating the influence of your larger contractors and killing missile defense and other r&d…
Comment by Jeffersonian on 5/7 @ 3:55 pm #
Sorry, I’m just a little disappointed that none of the more puerile among us hasn’t taken my link to Meghan’s post and come up with something oh-so-clever like “A Tale of Two Titties.â€
Like her daddy, she’s a mediocre writer with a room-temperature IQ that does little but spout the zeitgeist. A leaf in the wind.
Comment by SBP on 5/7 @ 3:58 pm #
But $17 billion a year is not chump change by anyone’s accounting
When you’re planning to spend $9 billion PER DAY, 24/7/365, yes it is. You FUCKING LIAR.
Comment by Makewi on 5/7 @ 4:01 pm #
Meghan McCain is the gift that keeps on giving. To Democrats.
I find it easier to read her if you, like, give her a, like, valley girl voice and stuff.
Comment by kelly on 5/7 @ 4:04 pm #
Not so fast, Jeffersonian. She’s written for Newsweek. Says so right there after she gets done telling us that the GOP is hung up about sex or something. But I think I speak for all right minded Americans (so say nothing of burnishing my considerable street cred) when I say, “Meghan’s got back.”
Say it, haps.
Comment by geoffb on 5/7 @ 4:08 pm #
Well there is also a Kathleen Parker piece there about how Elizabeth Edwards is John’s enabler.
Comment by louchette on 5/7 @ 4:10 pm #
first they came for mr. happyfeet…
don’t worry guys (and gals and Others, even!) if it comes down to that, then blowhard and i can teach all of ya’ll all about culture jammin’ and punk rawk borrowing of teh means of production. *wink* take away my ability to bitch on the internet and i’ll sneak into some office with a printer and go postering the next day. find a way to stop me from postering and i’ll start making t-shirts. by hand with a sharpie. goddam it. take away my t-shirts and i’ll be topless. and i’ll also hustle up a sky-writer and find a way to convince *cough* him to broadcast the truth.
we are not totally powerless. not yet anyway.
Comment by happyfeet on 5/7 @ 4:12 pm #
Meghans’s got babyback I think. babyback ribs and rolls. Lots of rolls. With buttah. And corn on the cob. With more buttah.
Comment by happyfeet on 5/7 @ 4:15 pm #
louchette is a lot correct I think. I still love the idea of stamping bills with “tax cheat” over Geithner’s name… I think it’s altogether appropriate you know why? Because the Secretary of our dirty socialist little Treasury is a TAX CHEAT is why. My little country made pitiful and I am very sad.
Comment by The Limerick Avenger on 5/7 @ 4:20 pm #
Obama will cut the budget
The number, he wouldn’t fudge it
You know he worked hard
To cut out the lard
And we shouldn’t begrudge it
Comment by louchette on 5/7 @ 4:28 pm #
i am sad too. very. and quite inebriated. at the moment. and at my age i have about a less than zero change of getting a nice shiny new transplant liver from these fucking fascist fucks. so i probably shouldn’t be drinking. T_T but fuck ‘em. hard. etc.
Comment by louchette on 5/7 @ 4:29 pm #
change = chance
FAIL
Comment by bh (blowhard) on 5/7 @ 4:43 pm #
You crack me up, louchette.
Comment by Jeffersonian on 5/7 @ 4:47 pm #
Not so fast, Jeffersonian. She’s written for Newsweek.
I hadn’t read Newsweek in years when I picked it up at my kid’s orthodontist a few months back. It made People look like “Madame Bovary” by comparison. What a shallow, stupid rag. IOW, Meg’s perfect for its pages.
Comment by LTC John on 5/7 @ 5:05 pm #
Naturally, DoD had to get the gimlet eye. Seriously, missile defense? It isn’t like there is any growing threat from that kind of thing, right…? Oh, and we might make the People’s Revolutionary Mao Air Force feel bad with all those advanced F-22s, so they must go too!
Bah.
Comment by happyfeet on 5/7 @ 5:17 pm #
you go to whore when the army you’ve not I think. I am very sad.
Comment by Matt on 5/7 @ 5:19 pm #
Seriously, reading the comment on that McCain thread makes me want to throw up. She’s giving instructions to conservatives and the libs are lapping it up.
Take her libs, please. And her father, who’s “moderate” stance cost us an election.
Comment by kelly on 5/7 @ 5:23 pm #
Possibly, Matt. It was about this time last year when I thought that the odds of a Dimocrat in the WH were pretty good. Sadly, our boy Barry is making Maverick look sensible even.
That’s quite a feat.
Comment by router on 5/7 @ 5:31 pm #
me i like how scottish law arlen’s new friends are treating him
Comment by Rusty on 5/7 @ 6:03 pm #
#56
What I find disturbing is that our president is causing our military to take a break from innovation. Innovation tends to lead to more innovation. What our president is doing is giving our competitors a chance to catch up. I want the most advanced defense possible.
Comment by George Orwell on 5/7 @ 6:05 pm #
I’m with you, louchette. This Victory Gin is gonna kill me.
Otherwise, what is the point?
Comment by louchette on 5/7 @ 6:52 pm #
my country makes me really sad lately. a lot of the people in it too. i never thought it was perfect, or even anything even close to perfect even. but this is on a whole ‘nother scale of horrible from the baseline norm of ickiness. you know? *sigh*
Comment by B Moe on 5/7 @ 7:48 pm #
I too worry that the ignorance has reached a critical mass.
Comment by J. "Trashman" Peden on 5/7 @ 7:52 pm #
“Duplication can be the enemy of efficiency.â€
“Can be” since otherwise it’s only a very poor second when compared as to nursing malformed permanent sucklings at the Gov’t’s own mutantous titties.
h/t Simenticleo
Comment by serr8d on 5/7 @ 7:56 pm #
So, for analogy, if one needs to lose a hundred pounds, the Obama Diet would consist of trimming a fingernail?
Comment by serr8d on 5/7 @ 8:00 pm #
There’s some talk of another round of tea parties July 4th. I wonder, will anyone show up this time around? Republicans, conservatives, classical liberals, we just don’t ‘community organize’ as well as the lefties do. This next round could be a bust.
Comment by Jeff G. on 5/7 @ 8:01 pm #
After eating a pound of lard and a double cheese pizza, serr8d.
Comment by J. "Trashman" Peden on 5/7 @ 8:07 pm #
we just don’t ‘community organize’ as well as the lefties do. This next round could be a bust.
That’s the dark side talking, boss.
Comment by serr8d on 5/7 @ 8:08 pm #
It’s a shame one has to read a journalist from abroad to get an absolutely uncolored and sterile overview of our current events. I’ve read that twice, and can’t find even a whiff of bias.
Comment by Slartibartfast on 5/7 @ 8:11 pm #
Some people say “spigot” as if it were spelled “spicket” (my mother-in-law, for example; she says they say it like that in Baltimore. Which is pronounced something like “Balmer”). More than likely, someone was confused by just what the hell this guy was saying, and went with a phonetic spelling.
Comment by guinsPen on 5/7 @ 9:02 pm #
Whither teh editors?
Comment by Jeff G. on 5/7 @ 9:08 pm #
I’m from Baltimore. We do say “spicket.” But we spell it “spigot.”
Comment by guinsPen on 5/7 @ 9:09 pm #
Avoid confusion by using “fawcett.”
Comment by meya on 5/7 @ 9:12 pm #
“For the leadership class, no doubt the private health care and the dijon will always keep flowing — some pigs, of necessity, being more equal than others.”
Also instructive to compare MSNBC’s fawning coverage to Foxnew’s view of ‘dijongate’:
http://gawker.com/5244126/obama-orders-burger-with-elitist-european-condiment
Comment by guinsPen on 5/7 @ 9:51 pm #
Obama Eats
Comment by Jeff G. on 5/7 @ 10:04 pm #
Dijongate? Nobody gives a fuck that the guy wanted dijon. We give a fuck that the media thought we shouldn’t know that he wanted dijon.
Comment by B Moe on 5/7 @ 10:06 pm #
Or that it is a news event that the President went out for a fucking hamburger in the first place.
Comment by Carin on 5/8 @ 5:54 am #
Meya needs to focus on the almost completely irrelevant stories in order to defend her man.
Comment by Carin on 5/8 @ 5:55 am #
Honestly, what we care about is that the fucking media is too busy in starry-gaze mode to do their fucking job. How many fluff stories have we had the last few weeks?
Comment by Stephen Macklin on 5/8 @ 6:40 am #
Scrub a $4 trillion budget with a tooth brush and find $17 billion in savings. It’s like he looked under the federal couch cushions for change.
Comment by Jeff G. on 5/8 @ 10:22 am #
This one trick pony strategy of trying to ironize away legitimate questions only works on the weak minded joiners, meya.
You’ve come to the wrong place to peddle your wares.
Comment by Carin on 5/8 @ 10:25 am #
That’s the dijongate part. Thankfully, foxnews knows what we want to hear.
It’s kinda cute how she pretends she actually has watched Fox News.
Comment by Pablo on 5/8 @ 10:31 am #
Ah, yes. There’s meya making shit up again.
You know what, meya? That’s a fucking lie and you’re a fucking liar. Fuck you.
Comment by meya on 5/8 @ 3:52 pm #
“You know what, meya? ”
You don’t click links do you? From above.
http://gawker.com/5244126/obama-orders-burger-with-elitist-european-condiment
“That’s a fucking lie and you’re a fucking liar. Fuck you.”
Heh. Indeed.
Comment by lee on 5/8 @ 3:58 pm #
Ahh, so the Hannity show=FOX news.
So, I guess meya=Protein Wisdom.