Today in Washington D. C. - May 7, 2009

Senate: Resumes consideration of S. 494, a bill to overhaul Pentagon procurement. Votes on up to five amendments to the bill are expected today and a vote on final passage could occur as early as tonight. Last night, Sen. Harry Reid filed cloture on the motion to proceed to a bill to place restrictions on credit card companies, H.R. 627. Yesterday, the Senate passed S. 896, a housing bill which is designed to help with foreclosure issued and will also provide more money and borrowing authority to the FDIC.

President Barack Obama is announcing his plans for $17 billion in budget cuts today, claiming to have gone through the budget “program by program” and “line by line.” Yet these cuts amount to “a tiny amount for such a big budget,” as McClatchy describes them. The Chicago Tribune’s The Swamp blog - Mark Silva explains what’s going on: “While serving up a record new budget, with record deficits, portraying the image of fiscal prudence is essential to selling it all to the public.”

Indeed, “[c]ompared with the total $3.6 trillion spending plan for 2010, the proposed trims amount to one-half of 1%,” according to The Wall Street Journal. The AP also sees them as a drop in the proverbial bucket, “Those savings are far exceeded by a phone-book-sized volume detailing Obama’s generous increases for domestic programs that will accompany the call for cuts.”

Politico can see through the smoke-and-mirrors, writing, “[A]fter promising voters he would go through the budget line by line, Obama can’t mask what remains a steady, even historic, rise in spending under his administration. The twin volumes released Thursday morning capture the moment: 131 pages to describe his proposed savings, more than 1300 pages to spell out annual appropriations requests that will exceed $1.2 trillion once the added costs of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are added to the total.”

Further, CQ notes, “Obama is far from the first president to go ‘line-by-line’ through the budget in an attempt to find savings. President George W. Bush would annually send Congress such a list, with mixed results.” In fact, in President Bush’s last four budgets, he submitted budget cuts of $17.2 billion, $15 billion, $12 billion, and $18 billion. In that context, Obama’s cuts seem rather ordinary. The Washington Post has the kicker, though: “The proposed cuts, if adopted by Congress, would not actually reduce government spending. Obama’s budget would increase overall spending; any savings from the program terminations and reductions would be shifted to the president’s priorities.”

Given the almost phantom nature of these cuts, it appears that the administration is looking for headlines about budget cuts in order to mask the massive amounts of spending and debt being racked up by the White House and Democrats in Congress. Quoting Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell , “[W]ith Democrats in Congress adding to the national debt at a rate of more than $100 billion every month already this year, and with a budget that triples the already unsustainable public debt over the next decade, it’s clear that there is much more that we can do to protect our children and grandchildren from the unprecedented trillions in additional debt proposed by the administration.”

---

Tags: Barack Obama, federal budget, US Congress, US Senate, Washington D.C. To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!