During a briefing at the White House today, a senior Obama Administration official continued to inflate the false budget deficit figures that they “inherited”.

“We inherited, as you know, a large budget deficit — $1.3 billion,” said the official. First of all, the budget deficit on January 20, 2009 when President Obama was sworn in was $1.19 trillion. He’s since added another $100 billion to stoke more Bush hatred and deflect the blame. The fact is that Obama and the Democrats controlled the purse strings that Bush signed into law. Obama voted supported the 2008 “bailout” (great job it did, eh?) and even wanted to spend MORE than what was eventually approved to get Bush to sign it. Obama also voted for the additional Iraq war spending that added to the deficit. Keep in mind that Bush signed this into law, so he isn’t innocent, but neither is the current President. Instead of making a case out of a lie, he’s added another nearly half trillion to the deficit in just the first four years of his term. The CBO now estimates the deficit at $1.75 trillion!

So, how can we fix this? After all, Obama has promised to cut the deficit in half by the end of his term. How? Well, if he increases deficit to around $2.5 trillion, he can hopefully get it back to where it is today, cutting it in half…;). Not really. Tomorrow the White House is releasing its budget. In it, we will find a whopping 121 reductions, terminations, or “other savings” which will save us - drum roll please - $17 billion in 2010! Woohoo! Where could these savings possibly come from, you ask? Well, half of it will come out of Defense! Yup, during two wars and other contingencies, we’re going to strip nearly $10 billion out of the defense budget. Here’s a further breakdown of these MONUMENTAL savings we’ll get from a nearly doubling of our deficit:

$35 million by eliminating the long-range radio navigation system, which was made obsolete by the GPS.
$142 million saved by ceasing payments for cleaning up land mines of states that no longer are cleaning up land mines.
$632,000 per year by ending the Department of Education’s attache program in Paris.
$1 million per year to end the Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation program, which has an astounding 80% overhead.
$66 million by ironically ending Even Start, an early education program that President Bush was HAMMERED over by Democrats when he made the same recommendations.

I can’t wait to hear what Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi will say. After all, in 2005, she said this when President Bush submitted a budget to eliminate Even Start: “”When the president puts forth a budget that discriminates against children, I think the point should be made to the public.” Will we she say so again when Obama submits the same cuts in his budget?

Now these are worthy ways to cut spending. I’m all about eliminating useless programs and I’m sure that if the administration looks hard enough and takes off the government blinders, it can find literally hundreds of billions of dollars worth of crappy programs that we shouldn’t be paying for.

Posted on May 6th, 2009 by CJ
Filed under: Congressional branch, Executive Branch, Federal Budget