Obama orders agencies to slash budgets: Could make it easier for lawmakers to cut "entitlements"

[Better Believe It]

Obama orders agencies to slash budgets
Programs that 'are least critical' to administration's overall goals face ax
By Lori Montgomery
June 8, 2010

The White House is directing agencies to develop plans for trimming at least 5 percent from their budgets by identifying programs that do little to advance their missions or President Obama's agenda.

The request, made amid rising public anxiety over government spending, comes on top of a pledge by Obama this winter to freeze spending at most agencies for the next three years. In a joint memo to be delivered Tuesday morning, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and budget director Peter Orszag order agency heads to go further by listing the programs that "are least critical" to their overall goals.

The new directive is the latest in a series of initiatives, legislative proposals and veto threats in recent weeks aimed at demonstrating that Obama is minding every penny.

"The public wants to know that we're willing to be very aggressive on spending. They're willing to invest, but they also want to know that you're going to wear the green eyeshades," Emanuel said in an interview Monday. "That's exactly what's happening here."

Congressional Democrats are also showing concern about spending. House leaders are discussing a budget plan for next year that would cut deeper than Obama's freeze. And confronted with lawmakers who are queasy about deficit spending, House Appropriations Committee Chairman David R. Obey (D-Wis.) has told House leaders that he hopes to win support for a $23 billion plan to save public teaching jobs by finding spending cuts to cover its cost.

Chris Edwards of the libertarian Cato Institute called Obama's latest proposal "a great idea." Maya MacGuineas of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget described it as "a trust-building exercise" that could make it easier for voters and lawmakers to digest more dramatic efforts to rebalance the federal budget, such as cutting entitlement benefits or raising taxes.

Read the full article at:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37566342/ns/politics-washington_post

[villager]

1. 5 per cent less hope and change, all around...

...if not more...

...since I suspect "entitlement" means "benefits a human being instead of a corporation...."

[Art_from_Ark]

2. If the Cato Institute is for it

that should send off warning bells right there.

End the two endless wars, and you can free up tens of billions right there.

[Kalyke]

8. wondering when the Cato Institute became liberatarian again.

They've been conservative for years and years and years and years.

[G_j]

4. "entitlement" means "benefits a human being instead of a corporation...."

bingo

[laughingliberal]

11. +1000 nt

[Vinnie From Indy]

3. I am sure the Pentagon took the announcement pretty hard.

They really want to get their hands on Social Security. It's a ready made mandate for Wall Street. They want what Big Health insurance got.

Here's an easy one - means tests for all entitlements. Paying folks with millions of dollars in the bank seems pretty wasteful.

[DJ13]

5. Reagan's economics of misery has a fan in the WH

This is the dumbest idea I've heard yet from Obama.

You do NOT cut benefits and budgets in the midst of a generational recession.

Thats damned stupid.

[TreasonousBastard]

6. I got a letter from one of my gummint jobs about costcutting...

and how they're going to get tough on hours and mileage.

This just after another letter about suggestions for efficiency.

My suggestion for putting us under Homeland Security so we could get guns and never have to worry about budgets again was not accepted.

[flyarm]

7. Funny he can do no orders that help the people..like days after the oil explosion..when he knew how

bad it was going to get and be !!

Nope his orrders were non existant!!..except the ones that benefitted BP oil!

[amborin]

9. but easy on Wall St., BP, etc (oh i forgot, Obama got mad at BP) rolls eyes

[enlightenment]

10. They're doing the same thing in the UK.

George Osborne's comments on the topic led to this commentary article in the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/08/george-osborne-canada-cuts-model

To a great extent, the criticism Ms Robie is leveling at the Con-Lib government can be applied to the current US administration as well - particularly the part about regulation.

[Shadow Creature]

12. oh please

The same people who gave us, I mean took from us, a trillion dollars in bailouts and "stimulus" (looking around that was a fraud) are now worried about deficit spending?? really??

[Better Believe It]

13. The corporate run media is claiming there is a huge public outcry against deficits and in support of

cuts in programs that benefit working people, the unemployed and the elderly.

That's total bull shit.

And far too many Democrats are now joining Republicans in making that same false claim!

[suston96]

14. All this whining about cutting costs and entitlements would be moot.....

....if unemployment dropped to 5 or 6 percent.

It's the ECONOMY........and JOBS, JOBS, JOBS and more JOBS....!

With over 300 million population how much unemployment and its attendant idleness and thus, criminality can be tolerated?

[nichomachus]

15. Is Grover Norquist still making his weekly trips to the White House

It kind of sounds like it