PrintJune 23, 2009
Dems ignoring Obama's paltry budget cuts
When the president announced that he wanted a grand total of $19.8 billion cut from a budget of $2.7 trillion, most people laughed in his face.
It turns out that his own party is laughing too because House Democrats are ignoring Obama's desire to cut even that paltry amount from the budget and are funding programs the president wants eliminated.
Walter Alarkon of The Hill has the story:
Congression Democrats are largely ignoring President Obama's $19.8 billion in budget cuts.
The president proposed axing dozens of programs that he said were inefficient or ineffective, but members of the House Appropriations Committee are including the money for them.
They are looking to cut elsewhere - and are targeting even some of Obama's priorities.
Democrats on the panel are, for example, leaving out $60 million required to close the prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba - one of Obama's campaign promises.
Disagreements between lawmakers and the White House amount to only a fraction of the $3.6 trillion budget's $1 trillion in discretionary spending. Democrats say they share Obama's larger goal of reducing spending. But they do not agree over which parts of the budget are bloated.
Spending bills marked up by the House have found funds for prisons for illegal immigrants, grants for public telecom facilities, and homeland security programs sending money back to local officials - all of which had been chopped by the White House.
Obama had called for $19.8 billion of cuts in discretionary spending next year, saying the reductions are "setting the right priorities with our spending."
But in the five spending bills that have so far been reported out of the House Appropriations Committee, lawmakers have ignored at least $655 million of the president's proposed cuts.
Democrats are politicians first. And a good politician can sense trouble long before it becomes apparent to most of the rest of us. They know the trillion dollar stimulus bill was a failure. They know the president's policies are becoming more and more unpopular as people are very worried about the fiscal insanity released by this president. They may even be most worried about the prospect of high interest rates and high inflation by the fall - something that would choke off the economic recovery and plunge this nation into a downturn the likes of which haven't been seen since the depression.
They are beginning to ignore their own president because very shortly, he may become as toxic as Bush ever was. Pretty soon, it will be every man for himself as Democrats will be forced to scramble to avoid disaster in 2010.
