Wednesday, April 22, 2009

SPENDING CUTS? WHAT SPENDING CUTS?

President Obama convened his first official Cabinet meeting yesterday. At the session, Obama ordered his agency heads to identify and shave a collective $100 million in administrative costs from federal programs in a budget of well over $3 trillion.

The Heritage Foundation responds: “Just how laughable is Obama’s latest stunt to try to maintain his “fiscal responsibility” credentials? This graphic might help:”



Don Surber has fun with the news:

[ABC White House correspondent Jake] Tapper to White House [Press Secretary] spokesbot Robert Gibbs: “You were talking about an appropriations bill a few weeks ago about $8 billion being minuscule — $8 billion in earmarks. We were talking about that and you said that that $100 million is a lot but $8 billion is small?”

The transcript is here.

Even Paul Krugman of the New York Times is having trouble with the latest “budget cut.”

“[P]retty soon, even here in Washington, it adds up to real money,” says the president.
Except, you know, really it doesn’t. Let’s say the administration finds $100 million in efficiencies every working day for the rest of the Obama administration’s first term. That’s still around $80 billion, or around 2% of one year’s federal spending.

And the media wonders why there were some 500 tea parties on April 15?

1 comment:

  1. People aren't understanding this. See, they made the graph first, and Obama glanced at it and said, "What's this speck here? Can we get rid of that?"

    I mean, I know a trillion is hard to grasp, but come on, are we that stupid? I pray that the Left are feeling as awkward as we did under Bush, so that there's at least some reason to still respect them.

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