As Sen. Schumer and the other caucus-instructed Dems rant about $60 billion in gov’t spending cuts being “extreme” – “likely to kill over 70,00 children” — don’t you wonder what ever happened to Obama’s pledge to go through the budget line by line to eliminate wasteful spending?
To refresh memories, here is an excerpt from news reports dated November 2008:
President-elect Barack Obama vowed today to get rid of federal programs that no longer make sense and run others in a more frugal way to make Washington work in tough economic times.
Obama said that to make the needed investments to create jobs, “we also have to shed the spending we don’t need.”
“In these challenging times, when we are facing both rising deficits and a sinking economy, budget reform is not an option. It is an imperative,” Obama said. “We cannot sustain a system that bleeds billions of taxpayer dollars on programs that have outlived their usefulness, or exist solely because of the power of a politicians, lobbyists, or interest groups. We simply cannot afford it. This isn’t about big government or small government. It’s about building a smarter government that focuses on what works. That is why I will ask my new team to think anew and act anew to meet our new challenges…. We will go through our federal budget – page by page, line by line – eliminating those programs we don’t need, and insisting that those we do operate in a sensible cost-effective way.”
Spending restraint is even more important with the federal deficit expected to top $1 trillion in 2009 — more than double the previous record. And that’s before an economic stimulus package that could cost upwards of $500 billion over two years.
Obama vows line-by-line budget review, November 25, 2008
I figure there are over 50,000 lines (and over 6,000 earmarks) for the President to review.
And, the GAO recently reported that they spotted over $200 billion in gov’t agency duplications and redundancies – sometimes, more than 50 departments doing exactly the same job … and often doing it ineffectively.
Think President Obama has his reading glasses on and a sharp pencil in his hand?
I’m betting no …
