The Biggest Spender Evah…
…lectures us on deficits?
US President Barack Obama warned that the US economy could head into a “double-dip recession” unless urgent steps were taken to rein in mounting public debt.
The US president’s remarks – in an interview with Fox News in Beijing on Wednesday, towards the end of his eight-day tour of Asia – marked his strongest language yet on the necessity of putting public finances back on a sound footing.
“It is important though to recognise if we keep on adding to the debt, even in the midst of this recovery, that at some point, people could lose confidence in the US economy in a double-dip recession,” said Mr Obama.
A 10.6 per cent plunge in housing starts in October – led by collapse in the apartment business – highlighted the dilemma facing him as he seeks to tackle the deficit without undermining a fragile economy.
“It’s about as hard of a play as there is,” Mr Obama said, adding that his team was trying to set up a “pathway long term for deficit reduction” without pulling a lot of money out of the economy in the short term via tax rises or spending cuts.
Here’s a bold and innovative plan, Mr. President: Spend Less. Cut the budget.
And, no, I don’t mean “cut the rate of increase” which is the sleight-of-hand crap that politicians of all stripes invariably use to trumpet as ‘cuts’ (see, for example, former Gov. Corzine’s budgets press releases). I mean spend less this year than you did last year.
And I also give this advice to our incoming Governor in NJ, Chris Christie.
Politics | Mr. Bingley | 
November 19, 2009 6:29 am
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Mr. Bingley, in all due respects, how many presidents have you known to spend less?
Off the top of my head….none!
But what a great chance to show us some of that “Change”, right? 🙂
Seriously, I would be *tickled* if he simply spent the same amount. The problem is, and I fully admit it’s not completely his fault, all these pork projects that Congress Members add on to bills and the new programs they come up with. It simply needs to stop, and he needs to set the example.
I agree – to a certain extent. Understand your sarcasm, but change isn’t an overnight or one year occurrence either.
The truth is – as long as the military continues to occupy Iraq and Afghanistan, it really doesn’t matter how less Obama spends. The budget will remain “shot.”
Wouldn’t you agree?
Also, I co-sign @ all these pork projects.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have put huge strains on the budget, no doubt. The cost for the wars this year is somewhere around $850 billion…which is a tad less than was spent on the stimulus package and a tad more than what we *hope* will be the cost of the TARP bailout (but this cost could certainly zoom higher).
Our Betters in DC have been throwing around insane sums of money, all too often it seems with out even reading the bills they pass (and exempt themselves from); it needs to stop. He has had a great chance to start turning off the faucet, and he has shown no inkling to do so, it seems to me. And that’s disappointing.
Warren Harding cut the peacetime budget of the US by 40 percent from the last year of the Wilson Administration in his first year. The Harding Administration did it in a controlled manner supervised by the new Bureau of the Budget (now OMB) that it introduced. It also got the US out of the post-WWI depression that started during the Wilson Admiistration.
But of course Harding was a yokel, a knuckledragging conservative. Everybody who is anybody will tell you that. What did such a neanderthal know?