ALG Editor’s Note: As noted by the following featured commentary, Barack Obama’s proposed $100 million cut of a $3.6 trillion budget is an insult to anyone with half a brain:
Obama’s puny effort at budget cuts
Commentary: Symbolic move proves insulting
By MarketWatch
April 20, 2009
LONDON (MarketWatch) — The Obama administration has announced plans to cut $100 million from the federal budget, and department heads will have to make the cuts within 90 days.
To get a handle on how insultingly trivial the announcement is, one need only compare the targeted cuts to the administration’s spending plan for 2010.
With cuts in federal spending by $100 million, the government will save roughly 1/36,000 of the $3.6 trillion it expects to spend next year.
Put another way, if the budget were a yardstick, the administration would be proposing to shorten it by 1/1000 of an inch. That’s 25.4 microns, or about half the width of a human hair.
No doubt the $100 million figure tested well with focus groups as well. But the president should be careful not to give away the store too early. One-hundred million dollars may be peanuts in Washington, but it’s real pork to any congressperson worth their salt. And budget battles can get pretty tight, even when you have fat majorities in both houses.
The administration says it’s already begun to make the cuts by curtailing activities such as departmental conferences and making plans to consolidate seven Agriculture Department offices — by 2011. See related story.
Rather than pretend to care about spending, the president could just double down, and call all those extra conferences “stimulus” spending. Of course, that would be cynical.
— Tom Bemis, assistant managing editor
