NYC Letter: Team Barry Tackles The Deficit, Part I Redux

Day 99 of CHOPE

Monday Mr. Obama directed Team Barry to find $100M cuts in 90 days from their combined cabinet budgets. Looking at the 15 departments comprising the cabinet, the combined budgets add up to $1,184.6B. The cuts amount to .008% or eight one-thousandths of a percent. [Pause.] Almost a full one-hundreth of a percentage point.

OBAMA'S MODEST BUDGET PROPOSAL
Obama's First Cabinet Meeting Yields A Meaningless Goal.
Here's Another Idea.

WASHINGTON April 20, 2009 (Forbes) - On Monday, President Barack Obama met formally with his Cabinet for the first time. The goal, announced in advance of the meeting, was to get the Cabinet members to collectively reduce their spending by $100 million in the next 90 days.

The cuts do not need to be implemented by the 90-day deadline, only identified. The actual cutting can be done over an unspecified expanse of time.

One downside: At this rate, it will take 2,392 years to close the deficit thus far for fiscal year 2009. That gives us a balanced budget in the year 4401. Earlier in April, the Treasury announced that the deficit for fiscal year 2009 (which began on Oct. 1, 2008 and is thus half over) was an unprecedented $956.8 billion.

The CBO estimates this year's deficit at $1.85 trillion. [Pause.] Subtracting Team Barry's $100M in cuts, that's only another $1.8499 trillion in savings still needed to balance the budget.

Here's an equally useful solution:

Get rid of the decimal points.

For example, Interior's 2009 budget is actually $11.3 billion. By rounding, we already saved them $300 million. A few moves like that, and you'll see a balanced budget in, say, 4400. Sure it's small. But as the president knows, every little bit helps.

[Hat tip: Hervé]

Shall we give it a try? We'll round off this year's $4.3 trillion* in authorized spending -- Shazam! -- $300B in instant savings (.069%). In less than a week. That's 3,000x the savings Team Barry is struggling to find.

Of course rounding the percentages gives us no savings at all.

CHOPE.

Millions in cuts. Trillions in spending. Solvent in 2,392 years.

------------------------------------
* See this and this.