SMI Visitor's Blog       

Welcome to the SMI Visitor's Blog where you'll find selected excerpts from our Member's Blog, plus occasional posts created especially for our visitors.

For SMI Web Members, click here to go to the SMI Member Blog.

« Blog Home

Perspective on Obama's $100M budget cut

Since we're doing perspective posts today (see post below), we may as well make it a double.

Here's MarketWatch's surprisingly candid take on President Obama's announcement today that he's asking his cabinet to find $100 million in budget savings:

To get a handle on how insultingly trivial the announcement is, one need only compare the targeted cuts to the administration's spending plan for 2010.

With cuts in federal spending by $100 million, the government will save roughly 1/36,000 of the $3.6 trillion it expects to spend next year.

Put another way, if the budget were a yardstick, the administration would be proposing to shorten it by 1/1000 of an inch. That's 25.4 microns, or about half the width of a human hair.

Ouch. Guess you have to start somewhere, but it's a little late to play the fiscal responsibility card.

UPDATE: The Associated Press notes that "[t]he thrifty measures Obama ordered for federal agencies are the equivalent of asking a family that spends $60,000 in a year to save $6."

The Heritage Foundation has a picture worth a thousand words.

Powered by Movable Type  |   Subscribe  |   Email Updates