President Obama, whose healthcare and economic stimulus initiatives threaten to dramatically inflate the federal budget deficit, heralded a new push Saturday to cut wasteful spending in Washington…
The president singled out a move by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to end consulting contracts to create seals and logos that he said had cost the department $3 million since 2003.
From the LA Times.
Wow.
He cut a program that costs 3 million since 2003.
He could have just said that he found a way for the dept of homeland security to save $600,000 off its annual budget.
but that does not sound as dramatic as $3 million since 2003. Not that $3 million has any meaning in terms of the federal budget.
Yet another bitter McCain voter! Oh, wait…
Maybe they were actually creating seals, as in animals, which would mean that $3 million outlay was just the start: if you create $3 million worth of seals, imagine what your kippers bill must be.
Seals with frickin’ laser beams!
Yeah, those seals would have been johnny-on-the-spot in that pirate standoff.
I’m picturing the captain backing up, the pirates point their guns at him. He looks down, sees sharks circling. The cock their guns. He takes one step back and falls out of sight.
Then, you see him rise up, heading to safety, riding on the noses of two seals.
Okay. I’m done.
Why save billions when you can save…millions?
Obama made it pretty clear that he was on Team Evil during the campaign, so I’m not at all surprised at his daily rape of America.
Yes that’s it. Lets whine because he cut $3 million. Should he have not cut $3 million? Every penny counts and when you dial down into line items on individual budgets $3 million is perfectly fine.
What does the government do that as a practical matter it shouldn’t and how much money could be actually saved by not doing it? I’m not saying that there isn’t government waste, but I do think that pointing out specific government waste is much better than just saying “the government sure spends a lot of money”. What would the Taberrok budget be? What would have to be sacrificed? What institutional problems would have to be overcome? What problems of human nature would have to be overcome. I too think the government spends too much, but I think it probably spends too much on different things than most other people. What I don’t see is how you get there from here. Note, I am not at all interested in philosophical/constitutional objections to government spending, just practical arguments.
Krugman will be pissed off. Cutting wasteful spending, whither fiscal stimulus ???
Since we have heard about the virtues of seals saving us from Somali pirates,
let me note that in an age in which much money could be saved by imitating
Estonia and going to having a purely electronic government, logos are very
important for achieving this worthy goal I do not know what Obama could have
been thinking about when he supported cutting the funds for these important
activities!!!!!
Cutting this spending is, of course, a good thing (except for the seal and logo creating company), I think, but here is the thing- it was publicly announced in order to deflect criticism of all the coming increases in spending. This is why it is almot completely symbolic and rightly mocked.
Seriously, this is the highlight of the cutting-wasteful-spending initiative?
Apparently Obama took it quite literally when told he needed to cut something as a symbolic move to deflect criticism over his inflating budget…
Hillary criticized Obama for saying Reagan had ideas.
Now conservatives are criticizing Obama for adopting Reagan’s ideas:
- focus public attention on trivial matters and express outrage
- cut taxes and increase spending while promising fiscal conservatism
- plan to borrow more than all previous presidents combined
And Reagan set a very high standard, having increased the debt to about 2.5 times the debt when he took office, while Bush came up a bit short by only doubling the debt.
This is boring. When will Alex tell us more about the credit snobs?
what do you mean O wants to cut wasteful spending? there is no such thing as wasteful spending! it all goes into increasing our national GDP…
Obama obviously thinks Americans are idiots. In the case of his supporters, I’d have to agree with him.
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