Obama’s Budget Cuts Coming Tomorrow
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Barack, Economy, Money
Mixed in with that economic announcement earlier today was news of budget cuts to make sure that the Americans’ know the government is tightening their belts first and leading by example.
“[T]o make the investments we need, we’ll have to scour our federal budget, line-by-line, and make meaningful cuts and sacrifices as well – something I’ll be discussing further tomorrow,” Obama said.He said later that he’d be rolling out “some reforms in Washington” tomorrow.
Does anybody else think his “line by line” talk isn’t just talk? I mean, at the end of the day, how hard is it to go through our budget and find the stuff that doesn’t matter? Yes, it’ll take time and it’ll be painful, but it can be done.
Now, if he does accomplish this and is able to significantly trim the governments expenditures, will Obama be able to take the “fiscally responsible” mantle away from the Republicans?
This entry was posted on Monday, November 24th, 2008 and is filed under Barack, Economy, Money. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
November 24th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Quite honestly, unless his budget cuts go after entitlement spending, where the real money is, it will all be window dressing.
Thanks largely to the bailout and the declining economy, current projections are that the budget deficit is likely to be near or even above $ 1 trillion next year. Nobody seems to be talking about this, or to understand just what it means that the the deficit will be equal to nearly 50% of the total budget itself. For one thing, it means that Obama’s stimulus plan is likely to be a lot smaller than advertised, unless he wants to spend us even further into debt.
I’ll be interested to see what he comes up with tomorrow, but cutting out this year’s version of the Bridge to Nowhere isn’t going to amount to anything
November 24th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Don’t be so sure that the “plan” for budget cuts will be full of details:
Obama light on economic details
November 24th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Tomorrow we will find out if he’s a centerist!! If he says that we will cut programs that don’t work then it should plead modarate fiscal conservative to the point that he’ll have them in his back pocket for two terms.
November 24th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
That should not be hard. Talk about setting the bar low. I heard no details nor anything to intimate that there will be anything that vaguely can be described as budget cuts are in the offing. But based on what he said in the 60 Minutes interview one whole week ago…
… for the next two years there will be zero fiscal discipline and we will be spending, borrowing and printing money like drunken Republicans.
November 24th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Republicans Fiscally conservative?
What planet, exactly, have you been living on for the past 30 years?
As Dick Cheney is fond of saving, in the early 1980s, Reagan proved deficits don’t matter. Since Reagan, we’ve had only one president who even toyed with the idea of fiscal conservativism and that was a Democrat.
Reagan, Bush 1 and Bush 2 combined for more than 70 percent of the national debt since 1776. That’s pretty mind numbing
November 24th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
Well people always say you don’t raise taxes in a downturn, which is a lie, FDR raised them on the rich in 1934, and the economy went up fast until ‘37.
No the truth is you don’t cut spending in a downturn, Hoover tried it, and FDR tried it in 1937-38, and both times the economy crashed.
Spread the wealth and fiscally stimulate during the downturn
November 25th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
[...] I noted in a comment at Donklephant yesterday, there’s really only one way to go about this if Obama’s serious: [U]nless his budget cuts go after entitlement spending, where the real money is, it will all be [...]