by Mark Silva
The Obama administration plans to deliver to Congress on Thursday a guide for saving about $17 billion in federal spending next year - as part of the $3.55-trillion budget for 2010 that President Barack Obama already has proposed.
The White House also allows that this is only the first installment in its promise to find more savings in the conduct of the government.
Acknowledging that the proposed savings are a fraction of what the president is asking Congress to spend next year in the record federal budget that Obama proposes, the White House calls this a worthy start.
"Seventeen billion, to anyone's accounting, is a significant amount of money -- that's in one year alone,'' a senior administration official said this evening, asking for anonymity in discussing a plan that will be made public on Thursday. "This is an important first step,'' this official said, "but it is not the end of the process.''
About half of the proposed savings come from the Defense Department - largely cuts which Defense Secretary Robert Gates already has publicly recommended, such as further purchases of F-22 fighter jets and development of a new Marine One presidential helicopter fleet.
Overall, the White House is proposing cuts in 121 areas, including about 80 that the administration had not publicly discussed previously.
Among the proposed cuts:
A "Long Range Radio Navigation System'' that has been rendered obsolete by Global Positioning Satellites, yet costs $35 million a year - "perpetuated by inertia,'' the official said.
Abandoned mine land payments, with the federal government continuing to pay states for mine cleanups after they are finished, at a cost of $142 million a year.
Even Start, an early childhood education program which costs $66 million a year. While supporting Head Start and other early childhood programs, the White House calls this one inefficient, though it has survived earlier attempts to cut it.
An attaché for the Department of Education in Paris, France, which costs the agency $632,000 a year.
"We are trying to cut back on the things that don't work and spend more on the things that do,'' the administration official said.
While promoting possible savings, the Obama administration also is proposing record budget deficits, with a promise of cutting the annual deficit in half by the end of the president's term. The deficit is expected to exceed $1.2 trillion in the 2010 budget year.
"We inherited... a large budget deficit... We necessarily had to add to it,'' another senior administration official said Wednesday. But "our long-term growth requires that we tame these deficits... So the president ordered a line by line review of the federal budget... so that we could make room for the things that we truly do need.''
Comments
It is just that: a start...find more to cut...hurry up!
Posted by: taxpayer | May 6, 2009 8:24 PM
Remember, if all goes well, it was because of Bush's heroic leadership. If anything goes wrong, it was Obama, Clinton, Carter, Truman, Roosevelt and keep going all the way back to Jefferson.
Posted by: Rush dittohead | May 6, 2009 8:37 PM
$17 Billion is a drop in the bucket at the Federal Budget level, but it's a start, I suppose.
Posted by: Brian M. | May 6, 2009 8:50 PM
17 billion out of 3.55 trillion !!!
is he kidding us? or he thinks we are that stupid.
Why put that 17 billion in the budget and then take it off. Is he playing games with people's mind?
Posted by: frieda | May 6, 2009 10:24 PM
About half the proposed "savings" comes from The Defense Department.
Now Obama has more of our money to transfer to the U.A.W. Unions---forget defending the country for now....it's still payback time.
Paulo
Posted by: Paulo | May 6, 2009 10:36 PM
Lots of jobs will be lost in Missouri at Boeing, but that will be Sen. Claire McCaskills problem to deal with.
Posted by: vla | May 7, 2009 7:47 AM
Yeah, $17 Billion IS a drop in the bucket compared to $3.55 Trillion. Unfortunately, thanks to a whole lot of spending in the last administration, the last administration running up a huge tab of credit, bad decisions made by BOTH parties AND the private sector, we have some repairs to the economy to make. You may have heard about them. At this point, I think we're lucky to be able to find $17 Billion to save.
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Just as we were left with nothing but trusting and hoping that Bush was right about Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, there's not much more we can do with Obama than hope and trust he's right about what this kind of spending will do to put the economy back on its feet. I'm as ill-at-ease about this level of spending as anybody else would be, but there's no alternative plan that isn't the same plan that PUT us here in the first place.
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The "at least" I'm holding out is that if Obama finds things are NOT working, "at least" he won't be as obstinately thick-headed as the last administration that insisted nothing was wrong with their plan or could possibly be wrong with their plan BECAUSE IT WAS their plan and they needed to stick to their plan to lift us back out of the hole that their plan had dug in the first place.
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But "at least" Bush didn't flip-flop.
Posted by: Op109 | May 7, 2009 10:56 AM
op109, the stimulus spending is one thing, but the thing that troubles me is the deficit spending over the next decade that Obama proposes. These budgets assume we will be out of recession, and yet contemplate ridiculous yearly deficits anyway. I agree with you that Bush engaged in way too much deficit spending, but recriminations against him do not excuse, justify or explain letting Obama do the same or worse. Vague notions of "something has to be done" or "at least he has a plan" are not really arguments for the policies. They are leaps of faith. Reckless ones, in my view. They are certainly not justifications for mortgaging the future of this country with a level of borrowing/spending that I don't think is sustainable.
Posted by: Herbie H. | May 7, 2009 6:21 PM
Here we go again, the President and his Democratic left wing are really cutting the military budget to shreds. That is where he's getting the 17B dollars.
Posted by: Paul | May 7, 2009 9:40 PM