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

Day 109 of CHOPE

BUDGET KNIFE
Durable Styrene
[Picture Source: DK Images]

It is important, though, for all of you [scil., members of the press] as you're writing up these stories to recognize that $17 billion taken out of our discretionary non-defense budget, as well as* portions of our defense budget, are significant -- they mean something.

Mr. Obama,
President and Penny-pincher-in Chief,
explaining that the significant enormity of
one half of one percent should be stressed
WASHINGTON May 7, 2009 (White House)

OBAMA TELLS JOURNALISTS TO STRESS
"SIGNIFICANT" NATURE OF BUDGET CUTS

May 7, 2009 (CBS) - In remarks on his administration's proposed $17 billion in cuts from the 2010 budget this morning, President Obama was somewhat on the defensive against charges that his cuts don't amount to much considering that next year's total budget amounts to $3.4 trillion.

As Steve Chaggaris noted in Hotsheet's morning bulletin today, the news that the cuts totaled $17 billion "landed with a bit of a thud" in the media. Reporters stressed that the cuts made up "a tiny fraction" of the total budget and that they would be hard to push through; USA Today noted that the "proposed cuts are about one-fiftieth the size of this year's $787 billion economic stimulus package — all of which was added to the deficit."

... [Mr. Obama] told journalists directly that they should stress the fact that the cuts are "significant" – a surprisingly direct appeal to reporters concerning which angle they should take in their coverage.

Even a doting press can't muster the necessary disingenuousness to stress cuts amounting to a half of one percent into a bigger story than, well, a half of one percent.

OBAMA BUDGET CUTS HAVE LITTLE DEFICIT IMPACT
WASHINGTON May 7, 2009 (Reuters)

OBAMA'S BUDGET KNIFE YIELDS MODEST TRIMS

WASHINGTON May 7, 2009 (WaPo) - The plan is less ambitious than the hit list former president George W. Bush produced last year, targeting 151 programs for $34 billion in savings. And like most of the cuts Bush sought, congressional sources and independent budget analysts yesterday predicted that Obama's, too, would be a tough sell. Isabel Sawhill, a Brookings Institution economist:

Even if you got all of those things, it would be saving pennies, not dollars. And you're not going to begin to get all of them. This is a good government exercise without much prospect of putting a significant dent in spending.

The Baltimore Sun tries having it both ways.

OBAMA'S BUDGET CUTS CALLED PUNY, VAST
WASHINGTON May 8, 2009 (Baltimore Sun)

THE HALF-PENNY SOLUTION
Cutting The Budget Paper Clip By Paper Clip.

OP-ED May 9, 2009 (WSJ) - President Obama unveiled a budget Thursday with a 2010 price tag of $3.5 trillion financed with $1.2 trillion of new debt. For domestic agencies, that's a 9.3% spending hike over last year.

Mr. Obama and his advisers know the public won't accept gigantic governmental expansions without at least some effort to pare the waste in Washington. So they scrubbed "line by line" through this historically huge budget and identified $16.7 billion of budget savings. This is less than a penny, about 0.47 cents, of savings out of every dollar Uncle Sam will spend this year. And these aren't real savings that will reduce debt, because Congress has already fixed the budget totals.

... Mr. Obama's war on government waste looks like a war on paper clips. Three-quarters of the cuts come from the national defense budget, not domestic agencies. Of the 10-year savings of $71 billion in entitlement programs -- now with a mind-numbing $62.9 trillion unfunded liability over the long-term -- one-third of the cutbacks aren't cuts at all. They are tax increases, mostly on the oil and gas industry.

One cut gives the word "savings" new meaning. The Obama budget will "save" taxpayers $290 million a year by increasing the IRS enforcement agency budget by $890 million. "Targeted enforcement resources more than pay for themselves," says the budget, in the first case of dynamic scoring by the Democrats since the Kennedy Administration.

Mr. Obama has scoffed at critics who complain these savings are inconsequential. "I guess that's considered trivial," he explained. "Outside of Washington [$17 billion] is still considered a lot of money." Yes, Mr. Obama himself signed a budget bill with 9,000 earmarks costing more than $13 billion and then justified the expenditure by declaring these levels of waste minor in the grand scheme of things.

We now live in a time when tens of billions of dollars has become a blip or rounding error in the federal budget. The Administration has said it's time to take action in reducing America's "$12 trillion American Express bill." We agree, but at this pace, with $16.7 billion of savings a year and even assuming no new debt, it will take centuries to pay off Uncle Sam's credit card.

These are not the headlines and reporting Mr. Obama thinks he deserves. His quiet exasperation spilled over Friday night after raising on deuces against three-of-a-kind showing at an informal poker game with the press:

Jesus Pete! What is so difficult to grasp about $17 BILLION DOLLARS! [Stares at the gathered press.]

BA-ILL-YEONS!

The public knows what a billion is -- it's a, um, you know, a bunch of millions -- but trillion? Trillion confuses Timmy [Geithner]. It's too big. So let's just stick with the billions. Sugar-honey-ice-tea, folks! [Knocks over Jake Tapper's stacked chips.] You're already in the tank! Just do it.

At this point Rahm Emmanuel slid Mr. Obama's "lucky" deck to Robert Gibbs and the game resumed.

CHOPE.

½ of 1% in cuts. $3.5 trillion in spending. Stress.

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* "As well as" makes it sound as if defense were the least cut. But some three quarters of "savings" will come from defense, the greatest gross dollar and percentage cut of any cabinet department.

Posted by Damian at May 9, 2009 11:45 PM