WASHINGTON – In twin strokes, President Barack Obama is calling on Congress to award generous budget increases to domestic programs while proposing relatively modest cuts to wasteful or obsolete programs that just won't seem to die.
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. The details were unveiled Thursday.
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.
Actually, $17 billion is only 1/2 of 1% of the federal budget. It's pretty much chump change.
And, Don Surber asks a good question about these cuts:
President Obama is cutting fat from a budget he proposed. Why did he propose it in the first place? This makes little sense.
Granted, there is great hullabaloo in cyberspace over his call to cut $17 billion from a $3,400 billion ($3.4 trillion) budget that was just approved.
It is his budget.
Why did he include the $17 billion in the first place?
It's all smoke and mirrors.
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