Weird World: Where Every Budget-Cutting Gesture is Worthless
As of 5 p.m. CT, the Drudge Report had prominently labeled this AP item a “slap” against Obama’s earlier-announced $100M cost-reduction effort.
I recall (though haven’t had time to go back and source) similarly snide dismissals of McCain’s earmark-fixation.
Running through both critiques is a common, wave-of-the-hand theme: “Posh. A drop in the bucket. Won’t do any good.”
Perhaps. But don’t we have to start somewhere? Isn’t it better to save $100M than not? Isn’t it better to eliminate billions in earmarks than not? If every budget-cutting gesture is deemed worthless, why bother? Wouldn’t it be more productive to embrace each suggestion of this ilk on the path to seeking more? Call me naive; label me a dreamer; but it seems to this neophyte that if you add up enough dollar bills, you eventually arrive at a meaningful sum.
16 Responses to “Weird World: Where Every Budget-Cutting Gesture is Worthless”
It reminds me a of when I was a small child earning my weekly $5 allowance. Sometimes I would only get $3 and my parents told me to just be happy that I got anything. So in a sense, I agree with you a cut is a cut, regardless of how small it is. I'm not going to be blaring an all-caps banner about it.
The main problem is that this just seems to be another page taken out of the Twilight Zone. Rewind the clock a bit and you have nearly the same arguments being made. It's just that the parties have switched and each now argues against what they once defended.
http://dir.salon.com/story/opinion/conason/2005…
“Yet even Bush's cruelest cuts will achieve no meaningful reduction in the half-trillion-dollar federal deficits created by his tax cuts and his elective war. Cutting “domestic discretionary programs” will inflict considerable suffering on poor people, but won't improve the fiscal deficit at all. Although the proposed reductions are large enough to hurt those who depend on the programs he wants to reduce or eliminate, they still represent a tiny proportion of federal spending.”
Save your pennies and the dollars will soon follow.
You can save more than $100 million by just getting rid of John Murtha.
It's always good to get rid of genuine waste. But $100 million is definitely a paltry figure, by government standards.
I was under the impression that we wanted STIMULUS and that the essence of stimulus was large government spending…
The larger the better.
I think the main problem here is it seems political. A response to the tea parties or something of the sort. The fact that he had quite a few chances to control spending on a much larger scale, and did not.
It seems that the number 100 million was chosen for a reason. It sounds big. 95 million does not. 100 sounds impressive. Almost like political consultants came up with this. You get lost in the number 100 and forget that it is million, not billion. That one billion is a thousand million. That one trillion is a thousand billion.
I agree, start somewhere. I agree with McCain, earmarks are a gateway drug. Excessive waste is small but also a gateway to more waste. I believe that he is passionate about it.
I just don't think Obama is…. This is political.
What's funny is the same people saying the earmarks were a drop in the bucket are the same ones touting the $100 million dollar savings. I think Obama's demands of cost-cutting from his cabinet are great, now he needs to extend them much further.
I agree with DaGoat:
doug1117, I tend to mostly agree with you. But I think it would be so helpful if the Republicans (or anyone else for that matter) came up with sound proposals.
It's easy to decry waste when one is attacking the party in power… It's quite another thing to offer solutions.
The Republicans are suppose to be for smaller government. Something they can't even achieve when they're in power AND the economy is going their way AND they have a budget surplus.
Yes I agree with you (but only to a point) that this is political.
This amounts to negligence. I say this as a former profit center manager and retired business owner. To call for a $100 million “savings” program, relative to the size and budget of the US, is nothing; goals so trifling can be achieved over a cocktail with a mid-level financial/accounting type who knows how to game the system by (for example): making something that was likely to happen look as if it is part of the “savings”; like, consolidating two offices in neighboring cities, which was going to happen anyway when Joe Blow the office head and his key assistant both retire next year; like, getting big suppliers to time their invoices differently so as to prepay or pay big AFTER the next fiscal year. Call me cynical.
In the real world there ARE ways to go after this kind of thing. Zero-based budgeting, intense grilling of the budget requesters, audacious goal setting — like: “Cut 5% this year and next and every year after until you can make an airtight case that another 5% would be impossible in terms of executing your mission. And if you come with a weak case, it will be denied, and you may pay with your job.” These tactics make people think outside the box and keep them squirming and having trouble getting to sleep. We need some of that.
Clinton/Gore at least started down that path.
One of the few specific things Barack promised (and I heard this) was that he'd be going through the budget line by line to cut out things that were not much needed, to reduce or eliminate agencies that were redundant, to streamline, etc. Where is that Obama, and when does the process begin?
Barack is gifted and has much to offer. But he is not experienced in running a big organization and it shows. Listen to the chortling tomorrow from CEOs and CFOs as they absorb what passes for tough leadership on spending in Washington.
Pete, what is your opinion on earmarks? Shouldn't we expect that Obama take the first step that he already promised to take, instead of signing bills and budgets with billions of dollars of earmarks and then making tiny symbolic cuts?
I'm not opposed to making small cuts and continuing to do so, because every little bit helps and the process of at least looking for the obvious waste can be helpful. But please, don't pat him on the back for a paltry cut which comes right after he neglected his promise of earmark reform. If the argument against earmark reform is that it won't cut enough to be significant, then you look like an absolute fool saying that THIS is significant when it's a tiny fraction of what would be saved by banning earmarks.
CStanley — I'd encourage you to re-read the post. I suggested that both earmark reform and Obama's $100M were worthwhile.
Pete — Any step back from the insane spending and routine earmarking is “worthwhile” on some level, I suppose. But, what is NOT “worthwhile” is when a POTUS, who has the power to create a much higher standard, stops at what is unarguably “tokenism”. I fear that on the big White House easel pad the item “Demonstrate Some Fiscal Discipline in 2009″ just got checked off. On to other things.
We are now into numbers that we cannot comprehend. When you are spending at the rate of $3.6 Trillion a year, that means you get to the $100 million milestone in just 2 hours, 26 minutes if you base it on 24 hour days — or 49 minutes if you base it on 8 hour days. How helpful is THAT? Not very.
Just using “budget dollars” as the savings standard is ridiculous. If he asked for a 1% savings, that would yield $30 Billion. Is there any doubt we could find a way to cut out 1%? Gimme a break. He has asked for virtually nothing, percentage-wise. There are 300 “one hundred millions” in $30 Billion. That would be a starting point. $100 million is akin to my skipping one cup of coffee every year as a sign of fiscal discipline. $30 billion would be the same as my skipping a cup of coffee every day, except Mondays.
I invite others to check my math. I did my best, but the point remains even if I rounded wrong or something.
Did you read the republicans budget proposal? They put it out about 2 or 3 weeks back. How is that not a solution?
You may agree or disagree, but it was a solution.
Any step back from the insane spending and routine earmarking is “worthwhile” on some level, I suppose. But, what is NOT “worthwhile” is when a POTUS, who has the power to create a much higher standard, stops at what is unarguably “tokenism”. I fear that on the big White House easel pad the item “Demonstrate Some Fiscal Discipline in 2009″ just got checked off. On to other things.
Well said, Terry. I'd love to be proven wrong because I don't care who gets the credit, but to me it's insane to commend Obama for this because it's so unserious of an effort that it's just insulting.
It's like a physician commending a morbidly obese patient for cutting back from 23 Quarter pounders a day to 23 1/2.
Indeed, CStanley, where you say …. “It's like a physician commending a morbidly obese patient for cutting back from 23 Quarter pounders a day to 23 1/2.”
Maybe it's a typo, the part about cutting back by adding 1/2, but regardless it sounds like my kinda diet.
More I think about it, though, that IS a federal gummint way of stating a “reduction”. If the trend line says you would go from 23 to 24, and you actually only go to 23 1/2, that IS a reduction (in Washington, if not in Peoria).