Obama agenda: Oh, those cuts
Posted: Friday, May 08, 2009 9:49 AM by Domenico Montanaro
Filed Under:
White House, Barack Obama
It's bad enough the administration was taking heat about whether $17 billion is a big budget cut or not. Now, it appears a bunch of Congressional Democrats might not even agree to those cuts.
Notes the Washington Post's Balz: "To date, the president's rhetoric about fiscal discipline exceeds his results. He has long said he would require his team to scrub the budget "line by line" for savings. Many of the reductions, while worthy, represent small change."
USA Today is gloomy on the long-term economy, writing, “Now, that esoteric revision is blossoming into a major economic shift that will affect living standards for years. Whatever other costs are borne as a consequence of the financial crisis, the U.S. economy appears doomed to an enduring episode of unimpressive growth.”
USA Today: “As unemployment soars, a combination of cash incentives and aggressive recruiting has left the Army National Guard with a surplus of soldiers, and now it plans to trim its force, according to government documents and interviews with Guard officials.”
Cold War Kids: “In an Obama administration characterized by youth, they are a Cold War throwback, the aging arms-control experts who haggled with Soviet officials over nuclear weapons and testing. Suddenly, arms control is back,” the Washington Post writes.
In February, Bobby Jindal’s words got him into trouble with Alaskan geologists when he mocked budget provisions for “volcano monitoring.” Could Obama’s budget cuts cause him similar grief with the NYPD? The New York Post writes, “An NYPD program designed to protect the city from nuclear threats could lose funding if cuts proposed by the Obama administration go through....If the budget ax falls, plans to put detection devices on bridges and in tunnels around the city, and to set up a command post in lower Manhattan, may be scrapped.”
The New York Daily News also has the story: “NYPD officials have found some troubling fine print in President Obama’s proposed budget.”
Also on the budget, USA Today reports, “Federal programs deemed ineffective by President Obama and targeted for elimination in his proposed budget include five that stand to get about $500 million in economic stimulus funds, documents show.”
The Washington Times notes something we've been harping on for a few weeks: the president has decided to punt any new immigration reform and the Times notes he's embracing an "enforcement first" approach. "Having already backed off his pledge to have an immigration bill this year, Mr. Obama boosted his commitment to enforcement in the budget released Thursday. The spending blueprint calls for extra money to build an employee-verification system and to pay for more personnel and equipment to patrol the border. This security-first stance is not unlike that of President George W. Bush, Bush Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, who said their immigration bill failed in 2007 because voters didn't trust the government to be serious about enforcement."
On Abortion: The President tried to split the difference, using his budget to placate pro-choice advocates with a decision to allow the District of Columbia to use taxpayer money to pay for abortions but he didn't lift an overall federal ban on using federal dollars for abortion.
We know the president likes to find the middle ground, but is there such thing on the abortion issue?
The Daily News also took note that the Spitzers have made their first post-scandal debut: “Looking for all the world like nothing ever happened, former Gov. Eliot Spitzer and wife Silda went out on the town together Thursday night for the first time publicly since his involvement in a prostitution ring forced him to resign last year.”
