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Forums - General - Obama to Cut Budget by $17 Billion

TheRealMafoo on 08 May 2009
akuma587 said:

I actually had it wrong, $17 Billion is probably about the same amount or greater than all the pork barrel spending out there:

http://www.newuniversity.org/main/article?slug=pork_barrel_spending_brings7

Do I think more cuts are necessary?  Yes.  Do I think we are going to see them until the economy recovers?  No.

 

 

Just out of curiosity...

How come it's good news to you when Obama cuts spending my 18 billion, but not bad news when he increases it by 100x that?



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akuma587 on 08 May 2009
TheRealMafoo said:
akuma587 said:

I actually had it wrong, $17 Billion is probably about the same amount or greater than all the pork barrel spending out there:

http://www.newuniversity.org/main/article?slug=pork_barrel_spending_brings7

Do I think more cuts are necessary?  Yes.  Do I think we are going to see them until the economy recovers?  No.

 

 

Just out of curiosity...

How come it's good news to you when Obama cuts spending my 18 billion, but not bad news when he increases it by 100x that?

Bush's 2009 Budget was around $3.1 Trillion FYI, and that does not include the $700 Billion in TARP funds.  If anything, Obama has DECREASED the budget from what it was the year before.  So...spending has actually decreased.

Assuming Obama adopts these $17 billion in cuts from the $3.44 trillion that passed in Congress, his 2010 budget will be in the $3.27 trillion range.  That is $53 billion less than Bush spent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_United_States_federal_budget

The President's budget for 2009 totals $3.1 trillion. Percentages in parentheses indicate percentage change compared to 2008. This budget request is broken down by the following expenditures:

 

 



We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.  The only thing that really worried me was the ether.  There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke

It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...."  Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson

TheRealMafoo on 08 May 2009
akuma587 said:
TheRealMafoo said:
akuma587 said:

I actually had it wrong, $17 Billion is probably about the same amount or greater than all the pork barrel spending out there:

http://www.newuniversity.org/main/article?slug=pork_barrel_spending_brings7

Do I think more cuts are necessary?  Yes.  Do I think we are going to see them until the economy recovers?  No.

 

 

Just out of curiosity...

How come it's good news to you when Obama cuts spending my 18 billion, but not bad news when he increases it by 100x that?

Bush's 2009 Budget was around $3.1 Trillion FYI, and that does not include the $700 Billion in TARP funds.  If anything, Obama has DECREASED the budget from what it was the year before.  So...spending has actually decreased.

Assuming Obama adopts these $17 billion in cuts from the $3.44 trillion that passed in Congress, his 2010 budget will be in the $3.27 trillion range.  That is $53 billion less than Bush spent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_United_States_federal_budget

The President's budget for 2009 totals $3.1 trillion. Percentages in parentheses indicate percentage change compared to 2008. This budget request is broken down by the following expenditures:

 

 

 

A few things.

One, is the 2009 budget was to try and temporarily fix the economy. I was against TARP from the beginning, and criticized Bush for it.

But there is a huge difference in a onetime market correction spending plan, and a long term plan that will spend those dollars every year. Here are some numbers from the Whitehouse:

Debt Held by the public as a % of GDP:

2008: 40.8%
2009: 58.7%
2010: 64.6%
2011 – 2019: Between 67.3% and 65.6%

Also, the best figure to use for sustained spending under Bush, would be 2008 (as 2009 has spending that would not exist under Bush in 2010). In 2008, the deficient was 459 Billion. The lowest estimated deficit from 2009-2019, is 533.

Also, those above statistics are from the Whitehouse, and almost every economist feels they are grossly optimistic.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/assets/fy2010_new_era/Summary_Tables2.pdf

With the governments plan, they tell us in 2019, we will be 7 trillion more in debt then we are today.

Why should our long term plan be to increase the problem, and not to fix it?

 

 



TheRealMafoo on 08 May 2009

Oh, and another interesting fact. Bush tried to cut a lot of these programs too, but Congress refused.

In 2008, Bush proposed ending or reducing 141 federal programs. Of those, 29 were terminated or trimmed for a savings of about $1.6 billion.

A lot of those 141 were the same as the 121 Obama wants to cut.