Monday, April 20, 2009

Blasphemy of Budget Cuts

AP Spin Meter: "The president gave his Cabinet 90 days to find $100 million in savings to achieve over time.

For all the trumpeting, the effort raised questions about why Obama set the bar so low, considering that $100 million amounts to:

--Less than one-quarter of the budget increase that Congress awarded to itself.

--4 percent of the military aid the United States sends to Israel.

--Less than half the cost of one F-22 fighter plane.

--7 percent of the federal subsidy for the money-losing Amtrak passenger rail system.

--1/10,000th of the government's operating budgets for Cabinet agencies, excluding the Iraq and Afghan wars and the stimulus bill.

Obama only asked his Cabinet secretaries to identify waste in their annual operating budgets, which total a little over $1 trillion. He's leaving out war costs, the economic stimulus measure, the Wall Street bailout and benefit programs like Social Security and Medicare."

2 comments:

Solameanie said...

To use a literary allusion, I think it's called "bread and circuses."

You'd think the public would start catching on...

Sra. Madera said...

The Public can't catch on because the Public listens to mainstream media who feed them the propaganda of the administration and fight for them.

The public hasn't a clue how much a billion or a trillion is nor do they care to learn and understand. They only want to know what is in it for them.