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Obama’s deficit reduction – a measly $400 billion over ten years

President Obama offers deficit reductions of a woefully inadequate $400 billion over ten years as he continues his ”trillion-dollar deficits for years to come.”

In this week’s edition of his, or rather “Your Weekly Address,” President Obama claims he is ”proposing a new budget that will help us live within our means”:

My budget freezes annual domestic spending for the next five years – even on programs I care deeply about – which will reduce the deficit by more than $400 billion over the next decade.

That’s right, a lousy $400 billion over 10 years. And that as Obama proposes another new budget that would spend more than $3.5 trillion and add another $1.5 trillion deficit to the national debt.

The national debt was $10.6 trillion, when Obama became president. Today it is $14.1 trillion. The national debt has already increased 35.5 percent during the two years of the Obama presidency.

Obama’s freeze on “annual domestic spending” amounts to just about 10 cents of every dollar the federal government spends. Worse, the freeze maintains the Obamacrats irresponsible 24 percent increase in this spending over the past two years.

According to the Associated Press, Obama’s new budget is “unlikely to even meet the president’s own goal of getting the deficit down to 3 percent of the size of the economy by 2015.”

Obama is so out of touch with his proposed continued profligate spending. He actually claims his new budget “asks Washington to live within its means.” Really, forty cents of every dollar he proposes to spend will have to be borrowed, further increasing the national debt. How is that living within our means?

Finally, in closing his, I mean “Your Week Address,” Obama says this is “what families do in hard times.” Does Obama really believe that in such hard times families can continue to borrow 40 percent of what they spend every year? Really?

As Senator Orrin Hatch said in the Weekly Republican Address:

The president’s proposal for a freeze in government spending might give the White House a nice talking point. But it is a totally inadequate solution to our nation’s spending problems.

COMMENTS

  • edeldoug

    Americans must learn to understand Big Numbers!!

    A MILLION dollars fits in a briefcase.

    A BILLION is 1000 Million. It is 12 Shipping pallets stacked 7 feet high with $100 bills.

    A TRILLION is 1000 BILLION!!! Or, a Million MILLION!! Imagine one million briefcases stuffed with a million dollars each! Imagine 12,000 shipping pallets stacked 7 feet high with $100 bills.

    Now, when they talk about cutting 100 Million here, or a couple Billion there, when you realize our DEFICIT is 1.5 Trillion and our BUDGET is 3.5 Trillion… those cuts don’t seem so “draconian” do they?

    Our DEFICIT is 1.5 Trillion. ALL our discretionary spending, combined, comes to around 1.3 Trillion. If we eliminated it ALL we’d be in the hole 200 Billion!!!

    We have NO CHOICE but to cut entitlement spending. It’s Fiscal Armageddon unless we do.

    • Common_Cents

      the numbers should be broken down in to more understandable terms such as by each taxpayer or household.

      Obummers ‘savings’ are like when your wife comes home after spending $1500 at the mall and bragging on how much she SAVED you!

      • scmom

        it is like being $1500 in the hole every month, and having your spouse tell you how proud he/she is that they will do without $40 of their lunch money… for a while… untill you can find a way to put it back in, because it is a real sacrifice…..

        1.5 Trillion = 1,500,000,000,000
        40 Billion = 40,000,000,000

        • Common_Cents

          If we really want to show the impact of these numbers they need to be put into relevant perspective that people can really grasp in terms of their daily lives.

    • nycenterright

      http://xkcd.com/558/

    • http://teapartisan.wordpress.com Socrates

      I even did a blog post linking to this comment.

      http://teapartisan.wordpress.com/2011/02/13/obama-takes-tweezers-to-budget-finds-nothing/

    • etlib

      In agreement but want to note that when people hear $100 millions they think that it’s a lot (and it is if you’re talking about individuals). part of the problem is that there’s no sense of how truly bug the federal budget, deficit and debt are.

      Breaking it down per peson might help but there’s no way the liberal leaning media and any liberal politician is going to do that and there seems to be little hope that the republican leaders will either.

  • trukerdad1019

    The Congress is going to have to reign in this guy and his WILD spending. If not We as a nation are doomed. 400 million is nothing as this guy has spent more than that runnin around the world APOLOGIZING for the U.S.A.. Hopefully the 112th Congress will snap the purse shut on him the way NEWT did to Billy Jeff Clinton. WE CAN ONLY HOPE AND PRAY THAT THIS HAPPENS!!!
    GOD BLESS and HELP AMERICA!!!

    • popster

      They have to start thinking in terms of 100s of billions to even make a dent. There can be no sacred cows in this effort, everything has to be on the table.

    • glaucon

      …but the jokes on us.

      The deficit needs to go to zero, and then we can work on the debt! Anything less is a joke. Across the board cuts is the only way to do it.

  • jmimac351

    Republicans are struggling to find $100 billion in cuts from a $1.4 trillion deficit. As it stands right now you could have substituted “Republicans” for “Obama” and it would be just as true. Unless the Republicans follow through with dramatic spending cuts they won’t have a leg to stand on and this clown will be re-elected because enough of the electorate will be demoralized and give up.

    • http://www.skiloveland.com skicougar

      These Republicans that attempted to come out with a 23 billion dollar cut and now opped that amount to 100 billion remind me of the high schollo or college classes we have all taken that when we started the class, we anted an “A”; and just a few weeks later, we were figuring out what grades we needed on the exams to pass with a “C”.

      If I were a new congressman, I’d be burning up the printers printing federal department dugets over the past 10 years and be on every House’s open floor speeches tell anyone on Cspan which departmenta have doubled their budgets over the past ten years.

      For instance, the Community and Regional Development department?s obligations increased by 342% in 5 years. Did your salary go up 342 % in the past 5 years ? I didn’t think so, and there’s rises like that all over, besides just defense.

      Don’t tell me there’s just 100 billion that can be cut. I know it hasn’t been raining on my leg since GW’s second term.

  • lineholder

    Just out today, Obama has raised amount to 1.1 trillion, per Reuters. 2/3 from spending cuts and 1/3 in tax increases. Defense cuts included.

    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/13/us-usa-budget-obama-idUSTRE71B1QU20110213

    How valid is this?

    • lineholder

      This article from NYT includes more specifics about Obama’s proposed cuts. Got some questions about the water treatment plants idea, but wondering about details.

      Supposedly this will be announced tomorrow.

      http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/us/politics/13budget.html?_r=2

  • carolina

    The govt will spend 35-45 Trillion over that time. This 1.1 trillion cut is still a pittance. obama is failing wide open again.

  • rivahmitch

    Obummer is the “inside” man in the Cloward-Pivens plan to destroy America. While his Union and “Community Organizing” Marxists attack from the “outside”to “overload” the system, he’s insidiously working from the inside to break it. His “budget reduction” is just another farce to further burden the productive and empower the parasites who support him. Personally, I’m sickened by those who who continue to attribute good faith to this b@$t@rd. He is an ENEMY, pure and simple (not “the opponent” as some RINO wusses profess.)

    Churchill said it:
    “If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

    Dole and McCainhave pretty much killed the more optimistic possibilities.

    • glaucon

      Obama’s Democrat buddies on Wall St. (like Jamie Dimon) are making a killing on facilitating and issuing all of the debt. Bring down the system and make billions at the same time, what a scam.

  • jonaf

    Like most liberal politicians, Obama knows when it’s time to start sounding conservative because he knows that wins people over. When will conservatives start realizing that not only sounding conservative, but actually being conservative, is a distinct advantage?

    It’s time to explain the budget plan and how it relates to conservative principles of getting people working for the private sector – maybe even for themselves. Have the guts!

    Jon
    www.gutfeelingbook.com

    • http://theminorityreportblog.com Repair_Man_Jack

      all of yours. Tell him his option is to cut it all or stay ceteris paribus. He can do the following.

      A) Stay ceteris paribus and demonstrate the extent to which he is an existential fraud.

      B) Take it all and perpetually piss off those who campaigned their hearts out for him in 2008.

      C) He can make some sort of a rational counter-offer.

      We take C, we laugh at him and make it a centerpiece of our campaign to oust him if he takes A, I have no clue what happens if he takes B. Perhaps B gets him re-elected, but then again, at this point, it’s the best possibility of the 3 available.

  • glaucon

    Unfortunately, many Americans don’t know the difference between the annual budget deficit and the national debt. It’s all accounting tricks until someone starts talking about debt reduction. Of course Obama’s proposal is nothing more than a joke that the media reports as if it is really doing something. We want zero deficit Obama, anything short of that will not do.

    • carolina

      obama is being spiteful. He wants to force higher taxes on the ‘rich’.

    • momofthecastle

      “Deficit” is a made-up word for “being in the red.” I don’t want to reduce the red number, I want it turned to black!!