[StBernard] Morning Bell: The Obama Spending Cut Farce Continues

[Westley Annis]

THURSDAY, MAY 7, 2009

  
The Obama Spending Cut Farce Continues <http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/ct/3042934:4007806482:m:1:142083520:7FA41D29E703C06A7B4305B8153DC60E> 
  

On October 7, long after Lehman Brothers collapsed and the extent of our economic downturn was known, Teresa Finch of Nashville, Tennessee, asked <http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/ct/3042935:4007806482:m:1:142083520:7FA41D29E703C06A7B4305B8153DC60E>  both presidential candidates: “How can we trust either of you with our money when both parties got — got us into this global economic crisis?” Then-candidate Barack Obama replied <http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/ct/3042935:4007806482:m:1:142083520:7FA41D29E703C06A7B4305B8153DC60E> : “What I’ve proposed, you’ll hear Sen. McCain say, well, he’s proposing a whole bunch of new spending, but actually I’m cutting more than I’m spending so that it will be a net spending cut.” A “net spending cut.” That is what the President of the United States promised the American people. And of all the promises that President Barack Obama has broken <http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/ct/3042936:4007806482:m:1:142083520:7FA41D29E703C06A7B4305B8153DC60E> , his “net spending cut” broken promise is the most flagrant by far.

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The Obama administration is clearly aware of the yawning gap between their rhetoric and reality. That is why on April 21, President Obama ordered his cabinet to identify $100 million in spending cuts in each of their agency budgets. <http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/ct/3042942:4007806482:m:1:142083520:7FA41D29E703C06A7B4305B8153DC60E>  Never mind that this cut amounted to just .006% of this year’s estimated $1.75 trillion budget deficit <http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/ct/3042943:4007806482:m:1:142083520:7FA41D29E703C06A7B4305B8153DC60E> . But the Obama administration’s audacity did not end there. Today the White House will unveil $17 billion in proposed cuts for next year’s budget. While $17 billion is a 1,700,000% improvement on $100 million, it still comes out as a farce when put in the proper perspective:



*	First, Obama’s proposed $17 billion cut is still less than half of 1% of his proposed $3.69 trillion FY2010 budget. <http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/ct/3042944:4007806482:m:1:142083520:7FA41D29E703C06A7B4305B8153DC60E>  
*	Second, half of the cuts Obama wants to make are in defense spending and were already announced by Defense Secretary Roberts Gates. <http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/ct/3042945:4007806482:m:1:142083520:7FA41D29E703C06A7B4305B8153DC60E>  
*	Third, the cuts are half as ambitious as the $34 billion in cuts former President George Bush proposed last year. <http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/ct/3042945:4007806482:m:1:142083520:7FA41D29E703C06A7B4305B8153DC60E>  
*	Fourth, the cuts have little chance of actually happening. The Democrat controlled Congress approved less than $2 billion of President Bush’s spending cuts. <http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/ct/3042944:4007806482:m:1:142083520:7FA41D29E703C06A7B4305B8153DC60E>  
*	Finally, and most importantly considering President Obama’s October 7 promise to the American people: The proposed cuts, if adopted by Congress, would not actually reduce government spending. Obama’s budget would increase overall spending; any savings from the program terminations and reductions would be shifted to the president’s priorities. <http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/ct/3042946:4007806482:m:1:142083520:7FA41D29E703C06A7B4305B8153DC60E> 
	

As our own Brian Riedl told USA Today <http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/ct/3042944:4007806482:m:1:142083520:7FA41D29E703C06A7B4305B8153DC60E> : “These presidents’ budget cuts are typically a public relations exercise, because presidents rarely put the weight of the White House behind these cuts and … allow Congress to ignore them.” And as far as that public relations battle goes, former Congressional Budget Office director Rudolph Penner tells the Washington Post <http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/ct/3042946:4007806482:m:1:142083520:7FA41D29E703C06A7B4305B8153DC60E> : “They have a long way to go to show fiscal restraint.”

QUICK HITS

The Los Angeles Unified School district pays 160 union members roughly $10 million a year to do nothing <http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/ct/3042947:4007806482:m:1:142083520:7FA41D29E703C06A7B4305B8153DC60E> .
  	
Silicon Valley executives are telling the Obama administration’s hunt for revenue to finance his massive spending increase to leave them alone <http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/ct/3042948:4007806482:m:1:142083520:7FA41D29E703C06A7B4305B8153DC60E> .
  	
Centrist Democrats who don’t want a massive new energy tax to kill jobs in their districts are telling Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) <http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/ct/3042949:4007806482:m:1:142083520:7FA41D29E703C06A7B4305B8153DC60E>  to set aside the Waxman-Markey energy tax bill.
  	
The economic stimulus bill enacted in February contains $3 billion that ACORN <http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/ct/3042950:4007806482:m:1:142083520:7FA41D29E703C06A7B4305B8153DC60E>  could receive, and the 2010 federal budget contains another $5.5 billion that could also find its way into the group’s coffers.