I think that President Obama’s call for the departments of the federal government to trim their budgets by 5% is laudable:
The White House is directing agencies to develop plans for trimming at least 5 percent from their budgets by identifying programs that do little to advance their missions or President Obama’s agenda.
The request, made amid rising public anxiety over government spending, comes on top of a pledge by Obama this winter to freeze spending at most agencies for the next three years. In a joint memo to be delivered Tuesday morning, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and budget director Peter Orszag order agency heads to go further by listing the programs that “are least critical” to their overall goals.
Unfortunately, it’s also completely inadequate when reckoned against the problems that we face. Total non-defense discretionary spending (that means everything other than defense, Social Security, Medicare, and interest on the debt) amounts to roughly $500 billion. 5% of that would be approximately $25 billion.
The deficit in 2010 will be roughly $1.5 trillion and we expect deficits of more than $600 billion per year for the foreseeable future. $25 billion is a start but it’s just a drop in a large bucket.
Not exempting defense from the 5% cuts would only save another $25 billion or so. Even if we were to spend nothing whatever on defense, it would barely match the amount by which we’re in the red.
Change you can believe in!
Obama has literally no incentive to tell you the actual things that need to be cut right before a midterm election. This does exactly what it’s designed to do: take some of the steam out of the Republican “cut unspecified spending we know you think is all pork, foreign aid, and bureaucratic salaries!” (paraphrased) mantra.
Sam –
Bummer. The college professor subjected to the realities of actually being an executive in tough times. Perhaps he can just crawl up in the fetal position…….and blame Bush.